What am I doing With My Life?

No one answered. The Tsahìk, Kitaya, turned to you, hands pausing their movement as her eyes narrowed. Great.

“Sit,” she ground out, pointing to the middle of the room near the roaring fire she had going.

“Yes, Tsahìk,” you agreed, quickly sitting down.

She left her current project and walked forward to circle you. “It has come to my attention that the Olo’eyktan has begun courting you,” she stated, eyes calculating as they searched your face. 

“Yes, this is true,” you said, shoulders heavy under not only her gaze, but Ronal’s, too.

“Why was this kept from me, pupil?” Kitaya demanded and you flinched.

“It was not on purpose,” you started to say, but she hissed. 

“Secret’s are rarely kept by accident,” she seethed. You winced as she pressed on, “He is Olo’eyktan, a match cannot be made through love alone. His mate will be future Tsahìk!”

“Am I not Tsakarem? Have I not been training for this?” you asked, growing concerned.

“Being a Tsakarem is not a guarantee that you will become Tsahìk. That is why two were chosen,” Ronal added, finally speaking up for the first time. 

She was right. You and Ronal were chosen for the role when you were barely old enough to walk, both coming from a respected family and having an affinity for the sea. 

The former Olo’eyktan and current Tsahìk had only one child, a son who was prideful and reckless. He was not chosen for Olo’eyktan and Tonowari was chosen instead. This left the position of the next Tsahìk needing to be filled. 

“That is not what I mean. Why was I chosen and kept in training if it was not possible for me to be chosen?” you begged for answers.

“I had thought he would have chosen Ronal. Eywa is playing tricks on me,” Kitaya muttered to herself, throwing her hands up in the air. Your heart sank. She did not truly think you were fit for Tsakarem, much less Tsahìk. You and Tonowari could be separated.

Heavy footsteps sounded outside as someone approached. You heard someone stop in the doorway and Ronal and Kitaya turned to the newcomer.

“You asked me to meet you, Tsahìk. What is going on?” a voice that was unmistakably Tonowari’s came from behind your back. You did not move, just gritted your teeth as Kitaya turned flaming eyes to the Olo’eyktan. 

“What are your intentions with the Tsakarem?” she demanded, gesturing down to where you were still hunched over on your knees. 

Even though your eyes were fixed on the woven floor, you could practically feel his gaze boring into your back. 

You felt the shifting of Tonowari’s weight, “I-” he started, stuttering a response before pausing and restarting.

“The tsakarem will be my mate if she will have me, why do you berate her? She has done no wrong.” He asked gently as if he was just curious and trying to see all sides of the story. He took steps forward to stand beside you, placing a hand on your shoulder.

“You consulted no one on this,” the Tsahìk hissed, although not as angrily as she had at you. He was still her superior.

You felt Tonowari’s uncertainty slowly being replaced with anger as the tension rose in the room. “You are angry because I did not ask you,” he said firmly, suddenly sounding every bit the mighty chief in that moment. 

You looked up in shock as he removed his hand from you and tore into the Tsahìk. “She is my choice, you cannot meddle in this. She has been training under your tutelage for many years, she holds the ocean in her heart, along with my love. She is the future Tsahìk, you will treat her with respect,” Tonowari ordered with authority. 

The marui was silent.

You looked back to catch the other two women’s reactions. Kitaya stared back at him with her eyes wide and mouth pressed into a thin line as if she was holding back words. 

Ronal’s mouth was slightly agape. You caught her gaze as she looked at you, looking somewhere between scared and brokenhearted.

“I respect you both, but I do not understand your decision. Ronal is the obvious choice. She follows the will of Eywa, she is a steadying force and will make a formidable partner,” Kitaya argued, gesturing to the other young woman who looked embarrassed that her name was brought up.

“You do not have to understand it to honor it. I am sure Ronal will be a good mate, but not for me. I have made my choice,” he growled. Your hands felt numb and cold as they pressed against the floor, being all that kept you upright.

“I do not mean to cause so much tension in a strong partnership,” you finally spoke and all eyes turned to you. 

Kitaya scoffed and you felt like a complete failure. “It is not you,” Tonowari’s deep voice washed over you and you felt his touch again. “Come, Paysyul,” he said gently, hooking a hand under your arm and helping you stand up.

He drew you closer, his arm coming to cradle your shoulders. “We are not finished, Tsahìk,” he said as he guided you outside and onto the path.

Rain still pelted the village and water dripped down your legs, your upper body was being partially shielded by Tonowari. You looked up at him to see his face full of conflict.

“I did not mean for this to happen,” you started, not sure what to say.

“It is not your fault. It is mine,” he called, wind and rain making his voice seem weaker. He was drenched quickly as you walked you towards his marui. His hair was plastered to his face and down his back by the time you ducked inside. 

“We cannot have a courtship if it causes so many problems,” you said, shaking your head as he looked at you dejectedly. 

“Do not lose hope. Kitaya will come around. She does this every time she does not get her way. Her heart was set on Ronal, even when she had no reason for it to be. It truly is not you or your skills as Tsakarem. The fault lies with her,” he insisted and it did ease your mind slightly. 

“Come here,” he said, stepping closer and opening his arms. You fell into them, your head resting on his chest as tears started leaking down your face. “Do not cry, Paysyul. Everything will be okay. I will handle it.” he soothed, running a hand from the top of your back down to the base of your spine and then back up again.

“We have only just begun to court and already things turn sour,” you muttered.

“Other people are happy for us. Your parents are overjoyed,” he reminded you and you laughed sardonically, remembering your mothers scream of joy when you told her of the kiss you had shared with Tonowari at the festival the night before.

“But the Tsahìk does not approve of me. Maybe Eywa does not approve of this either.” you whispered, too scared to say it louder. 

Tonowari pulled you away from his chest with each hand on either of your shoulders and bent down to be eye level with you. “Do not say that,” he demanded, maybe with more force than you had heard him speak to you before. “Let us enjoy our first days of courtship and not let others' opinions make us question this. Come take a walk with me and clear your head.”

He held out a hand for you to take but you just stepped back. “I should go, I just need to think,” you refused. 

He looked momentarily hurt but was quickly distracted when a warrior tore down the paths and stopped outside of the open doorway. “My apologies, Olo’eyktan,” he said, panting from running, “but you are needed on the eastern side of the village. A canoe has capsized.”

“Was anyone hurt?” you asked immediately before you realized you should have let Tonowari handle this.

The warrior's eyes turned to you, shaking his head slightly, “No, Tsakarem, but their entire catch for the day was lost,” he said and you relaxed a little. More fish could be caught.

“I will be there in a moment. Go,” Tonowari promised, turning to you again as the warrior ran back to the accident.

“You are okay?” he asked, hands finding your arms.

You waved him off, “I am fine, go, they need you,” you instructed but he hesitated.

“You need me too,” he said lowly

“I am fine,” you repeated, cupping his cheek and smiling faintly. “Go.”

He nodded, eyes searching yours for a moment and then he turned and stalked out of his marui and down the path.

-

As soon as the rain slowed, the rest of your day was spent weaving nets and helping the other young girls collect anemones and kelp for healing. It kept your mind busy and you got to do it with girls you hadn't seen much lately.

It was work you did not normally help with since you spent most days with Ronal training silently, but you enjoyed talking to friends who you usually only saw at dinner. They were warriors, divers and weavers, meaning your schedules rarely lined up.

You should have gone back to the Tsahìk to finish your duties, but you were not ready to face her, and you had a feeling she was not ready to face you either. When your friends prodded for details about Tonowari, you just laughed them off and pretended it was all a secret. 

But the ever insatiable Roa kept pressing for information, “Tell us, when he kissed you did you fall in love? It looked like you fell in love. Does he kiss as well as he walks?” she giggled.

You scoffed at her ridiculous question, “I fell in love with him many years ago, and besides, I will not gossip about the Olo’eyktan,” you chided and she sighed with a roll of her eyes.

“So pious, our little Tsakarem. They have been teaching you to be tightlipped,” she complained and the other girls laughed.

You talked and walked with them all the way to dinner where you always sat in a group. You collected your plates and piled them high with fresh caught fish, seaweed, and the soft insides of oysters and mollusks.

When you sat down, Roa was quick to elbow you in your side and gesture across the space to where many young warriors sat congregated. Tonowari was among them, but his eyes were fixed on you.

You smiled and waved, expecting him to acknowledge you and continue on. Your argument from this morning was still fresh in your mind.

But instead of a simple smile back, Tonowari stood. Many of the eyes traveled to him as he crossed the large structure used for community gatherings and meals and stopped before you. 

“Hello, Paysyul, may I sit?” he asked, looking around to the other young girls who all stared open-mouthed back. 

“You want to sit here?” you asked incredulously.

“Yes… is that a problem?” he asked, suddenly looking much more nervous and skittish than before. He was not thinking you would question him and you felt guilty for it now.

“You do not want to sit with the other young men? You would rather gossip with girls?” You laughed. 

“Perhaps, if you are one of the girls,” he said quietly.

“No, do not rejoin the men! Come, sit, Olo’eyktan!” Roa chirped, scooting over and patting the now empty space beside you.

Tonowari searched your face and when he found only joy and a little awkwardness, he hesitantly sat with your group of friends.

“She was just about to tell us the story of how you fell in love, maybe you should tell us instead!” Roa grinned mischievously.

“Was she?” He asked, turning to you and popping dried seaweed in his mouth. 

You sighed, playfully rolling your eyes at everyone’s determination to embarrass you today. “I am sure they would have gotten it out of me eventually, Olo’eyktan,” you murmured.

“Very well.” He nodded, and the girls all giggled and leaned forward. “I first knew I was in love with y/n when she hit me with the blunt end of her spear and knocked me into the ocean,” he confessed and your friends all looked at you with shocked faces. 

“What?!” Tamì asked, elbowing you gently.

You scoffed, “Surely that is not the moment you fell in love with me,” you argued, ignoring your friends as they watched you go back and forth. “Out of all of our sweet moments, all of the time we have spent together, you chose that one?”

“Yes, because when I surfaced from the water, you asked if I was okay and you held my hand as you helped me out.” He said as if it was obvious.

“And?” You asked, not remembering the moment as clearly as he was. 

“And you held my hand,” he stated, fingers fiddling with his plate.

“That is all it took for you to fall in love with me?” you laughed.

“No, that is when I knew, but I have always loved you,” he said with a smug smile but genuine eyes.

-

Over the next few days, you fell into a rhythm. You would wake with the dawn and meet Ronal in the tide pools in the seawall, working quietly as you collected herbs that grew in the cyan water. 

The Tsahìk rarely met with either of you, still too busy with preparing for Tonowari’s formal coronation that would conclude the festivities of the week. You also had an inkling that she was giving you the menial tasks to get you out of her sight until she collected herself, although you would never verbalize that thought.

Ronal sat back on her heels to wipe the sweat from her eyes. Both of you sat waist deep in the water, as you scrounged around for kelp and urchins. 

“How long is she going to punish us?” Ronal groaned, speaking the first words in hours.

You looked up at her, but your hands did not stop moving. “What do you mean?” you asked, having a feeling of what she meant, but not brave enough to vocalize it.

“She is angry at you for catching his eye, and angry at me for not doing so,” Ronal explained, sending you a flat look as if she saw right through you. You finally stilled, sitting back as your lips pressed into a line.

In some ways, you and Ronal were friends. You had grown up together in the Tsahìk’s hut and in the eastern sea. Sisters because of the salt that ran through your veins, not the blood. But she was also your rival. The two of you had been pitted against each other from the day you were both chosen to be Tsakarems. It was a constant question that lingered among the clan, who would win out? You had never truly guessed it would have been you, you had hoped, but never dared believe it.

“And did you intend to? Catch his eye, I mean,” you asked against your better judgement. You wanted to know, but more than that, you needed to know. 

Ronal’s eyes flicked back down to the water. “Of course. It was my duty, I was under orders from the Tsahìk to do what I could and I still failed.”

This news did not necessarily shock you, you had a feeling she was getting lessons that you were not invited to. Still, the underlying question remained, “But did you want him to love you? Do… do you love him?” you asked. 

She stilled, eyes avoiding yours before she finally looked up. “No, and in truth… I have no desire to mate with anyone at the moment. I was not interested in Tonowari, just the role that being his mate would have given me,” she confessed and you relaxed. 

“Then it seems we were both saved from an uncomfortable lifetime of loveless misery,” you smiled sardonically and she scoffed, shaking her head.

“You are dramatic. It would not have been quite so bad,” she said, rummaging through her basket to pick the smaller urchins out to make more room for nicer ones.

“Maybe for you. But for me… to watch him love another, it would have torn my heart out and laid it bare on the rocks to be picked at by the fkio,” you said, knowing it sounded grotesque, but the truth ran through each word.

She barked out a laugh at your imagery. “Then let her punish us, it is worth it if it saves you from such a cruel fate,” she stated. 

You glowed at the rare act of camaraderie she showed you. “You are not truly as severe as people like to pretend you are, Ronal.”

Her shoulders tensed as she leveled you a glare, “Do not say that. I work very hard to keep that reputation. One kind word from you and it all shatters,” she tutted, and you saw that she was teasing.

You smiled, “my lips are sealed. It is between us and the great mother,” you promised.

-

The next night, the last of the festivities would occur before Tonowari was officially coronated. Although he had held the title for several weeks, the Metkayina way was to wait until after a period of mourning before the celebrations could start. They had been ongoing for days, fire lit beaches and liquor-soaked laughter becoming a regular experience this past week.

Tonowari danced with you, swinging you around in his arms as the music played song after song. Your feet grew tired and his must have as well, because he dragged you away from the others by your hand. 

“Wait,” you muttered, knowing now was the perfect time to do what you had been waiting for all week. “Come, let me give you something.”

It was your turn to pull as you both tripped over mangrove roots and ducked under branches to reach your cove. 

“Where are you going?” Tonowari’s mother asked, splaying a hand on Tonowari’s arm as he passed her. You both paused in surprise at being stopped and you glanced at Tonowari for his response. 

“We will be back shortly,” he assured her but her lips curved into a knowing smile, cutting over to you and back to him.

“Ma’itan, this is your party. You would miss what has been done in your honor?” she asked and you inwardly flinched. She was right, you were dragging him away.

You stepped forward, Tonowari’s hand still in yours. “It is my fault. I wanted to give him my gift, but I can do so tomorrow in the light of day,” you explained, blushing when you realized the implications of two young people in love sneaking off together. Was that what she thought you were doing? 

“No, no, Paysysul,” Tonowari insisted, squeezing your hand, “We will go tonight.” 

He turned back to his mother and placed his opposite hand on her wrist. “We will be back,” he repeated and slipped away from her. 

“Keep him in line, y/n,” she called teasingly and you nodded, slightly relieved that her tone was light.

“Yes, ma’am. I will try,” you agreed with a laugh. You took one last look at her shaking her head over your shoulder before Tonowari dragged you away. 

At the cove, you found the mesh bag near the palm exactly as you had left it. You dusted off the sand and sat down on a waist-high mangrove root, having to jump a little to sit properly. 

He sat beside you, curiously looking at the gift in your hands. 

“It’s not much, but… I hope you like it,” you said, suddenly feeling shy as you handed the wrapped gift to Tonowari. 

“Thank you, Paysysul. I will cherish it,” he smiled broadly as he took the bag in his hands.

You huffed out a laugh, “You do not even know what it is,” you gaped.

“Of course I do, it is the chest guard,” he insisted and took it out of the bag. He set the bag beside him as he looked at the woven gift. “It is beautiful,” he muttered, looking it over and running his hands on the smooth scales along the front.

“Do you like it?” you asked tentatively.

“I love it,” he said, looking over to you and reaching up to grasp your chin between his knuckle and thumb. “It's perfect.”

“The surprise was spoiled,” you pouted, upset that he knew what it was. He was too smart for his own good.

“I am sorry, it is my fault. I knew it was mine when you said you had something for me, but I still should have acted surprised,” he relented. 

“Hmm, it is your fault. I do not feel so bad now,” you teased, feeling lighter as he smiled and pulled your face in closer to his. He gave you a kiss on your lips, soft and sweet, not lingering there for long before he was already pulling away.

“I got you something, too,” he said quietly, getting up abruptly and leaving a yawning, cold space where he once was. 

“You did not have to get me anything. I have not done something to be remembered or rewarded,” you argued in surprise. 

 He walked through the sand, crouching to the ground and reaching under a fern. 

“You hid my gift under a fern! How did you know we would be here?” You asked, barking out a laugh as his fingers grasped something and he went to pull it out. 

“I knew because I know you, Paysyul. You have waged many wars this week, but even so, I can give gifts to the future Tsahìk if I wish. I am Olo’eyktan now after all.” In his grasp was now a large, pearlescent conch shell and your heart stopped beating. 

“Tonowari,” you started, but any words you could have said left you. He approached you, carefully holding the gift of great significance in his hands. 

The conch shell was hard to find and rare. Metkayina legend stated that it would appear only when one has found their mate and it signaled that Eywa would bless the union. It could be used as a blowing horn, a call back to old traditions, when island dwellers would blow on the horns to call in their lovers home from the sea. 

It was a gesture that said, when you call, I will come. But, more important than that, it was a mating gift.

“I know we are technically still early in our courtship, but in my defense, it was not new to me,” he smiled nervously at his attempt at a joke. “I found it on a dive this morning and I knew it was time to give it to you. I have loved you for many years. I feel in my heart it is you who I want to spend my life with, if you will have me,” he said, eyes locked on you, but his hands gripped the shell like a lifeline.

You blinked, taking the shell in your hands even as you said, “What? But - but should we not wait until after your coronation?” 

He lifted his brow, “Why should we wait?” he asked, imploring for understanding. He lifted his hands to your face, caressing your smooth skin and making your thoughts fuzzy. If his goal was to distract you, it was working.

You pressed on, “Because, what if the festivities have gotten to you? What if you change your mind? The elders are still getting used to the idea of us together,” you argued, thinking of the Tsahìk.

You could not believe this was Tonowari speaking. Your calculated, patient Tonowari who always chose his words carefully and rarely rushed into anything.

“No, I have told you already, I choose you,” he insisted, “I do not care what the tittering mothers or the Tsahìk think. They will come around. It is you that I care about.”

“I do not think us rushing into mating will make them any less worried,” you laughed at his logic and he shot you an exhaustive look. He stepped closer, now standing between your knees as he gripped the root on either side of you.

He pursed his lips before speaking, “If you wish to wait, then we will. I do not wish to force you anything you do not want,” he said subduely and you rushed to correct him.

“It is not that, I do want to! I just…” you hesitated, “I also want them to like me, and not just because you like me. I worry that I will lose your mother’s trust, and the Tsahìk’s,” you admitted and his eyes softened.

“You have not, they are just being stubborn and growing used to something new, but they will. They will come to see this for what it is, a strong bond between two who love each other,” he explained and it did ease your mind.

“Do not torture me, say you will be mine,” he practically begged and all your resolve crumbled to ash. All the excuses you had thought up were now silent as one of his hands crept to the back of your neck.

“Ma’Yawne, I will be yours. I always have been,” you promised, smiling softly as his eyes lit up. Before he kissed you, he leveled his nose to yours, breath mingling. He leaned in, backed away and looked into your eyes. 

“Yes,” you muttered, knowing what he was asking before he said the words. Do you love me? Are you sure? 

“I love you, Tonowari,” you promised.

A smile lit his face and his whole posture relaxed like a burden was lifted from him.

“I love you, Paysysul.”

Join my taglist here.

Tonowari Taglist: @chaotickittenanchor @queenofviolenceandnerds @yogirlminnie @kodzuvk @saltedcoffeescotch @saibaxoxo @iconotfound 

Where other girls had flat stomachs and hard planes, you had soft skin and rounded features. It wasn’t impossible for Na’vi to be built this way, you had seen others when you visited distant villages for festivals. Nothing was wrong with you, but for some reason, it gave others the impression that there was.

They made fun of you for looking different, even though you outswam many of them, your body cutting through the water just as well. Your height was a useful tool when they could not reach the ripest fruit hanging from the taller branches. You had never verbalized it, but you knew you were stronger than them too. 

Yet, despite your advantages, they did not see it as you did. They called you names when they thought you could not hear, and you pretended not to notice.

For most of your childhood, the only one larger than you was Tonowari, a young man from a prominent Metkayina family. He was praised for his skill with a spear and his quick thinking. He was criticized for his reckless behavior and confidence in most things. He was not cruel, never mean, but he knew what he knew, and few could tell him different. 

He towered above the other boys well before he stopped growing. His shoulders were broad and his limbs long, making a terrifying threat in the water. But while you stopped growing in your late teenage years, he never seemed to stop. The top of your head came to his nose, still half a head shorter than him, which he used to tease you about as if it was a competition.

He had become a friend to you, falling into a tight knit group of friends that never acted like you were different. Poeya and Rayal were sisters who were thick as thieves, but fought together like territorial ilu. Nakata was a sometimes reserved, but humorous young man who was Tonowari’s best friend and your cousin. It was he who pulled you into the group and forced you to make friends, effectively pulling you out of your shell. 

When Tonowari had passed his Iknimaya, it felt like the celebration lasted days instead of hours. People still talked about his quickness and his bravery from the trial. He had quickly risen among the hunters as someone fearless and strategic, not hesitating to do what needed to be done to keep the village safe and provide for the clan.

When the elders decided who should be next in line for the mantle, they unanimously agreed; his positives far out weighed his flaws. The Olo’eyktan and Tsahìk had named him Eyktanay, all eyes watched him.

Which was why it was especially jarring when he had gotten in trouble for one of the few times in his life a few months ago. He had been on a hunt with Nakata and a few others, a select group chosen to hunt an akula who had been too close to the Ilu pen, and therefore, too close to the village for comfort. They had broken up to comb the waters on Tonowari’s orders, splitting off into pairs. Despite the others’ hesitancy, he insisted it would be fine that there was an uneven number of people, that he would go at it alone.

When the akula attacked him, it was from behind. His tsurak had just barely dodged in time to avoid a deadly bite. Luckily, Nakata and their friend, Yoru, had still been nearby, and even luckier, the akula was young, not at its full size yet. The three were able to help Tonowari in killing the beast and it had fed the village for many weeks. 

Still, Tonowari walked away with a slice down his back, leaving a permanent, thick teal scar from his shoulder blade to nearly his hip. The Olo’eyktan had been furious at his recklessness, his pride. The entire village had questioned whether to doubt Tonowari and it made him start to doubt himself. 

Your heart broke for him because of his pain, but you knew he would come back, he always did. As soon as you had laid eyes on him, you had known he was special. Your crush on Tonowari had been instant. When he smiled and greeted you the first time you hung out around them at only 12 years old, you knew you were completely hopeless. 

Tonowari was kind and handsome and cocky, all things that half the young people in Awa'atlu noticed as well. He was a year older than you along with Nakata and Poeya. Your chances with him were slim, even as he guarded you, Poeya, and Rayal from danger or uncomfortable encounters with the other young men. You had always reminded yourself that his eyes watched over you like a family member more than a suitor. 

When he overheard the other teens make snide comments about you, he always defended you, shoving them aside and telling them not to mess with you or else they would have to answer to him. And when they teased him about how he must like you for saying such a thing, he always shrugged and said, “I would be so lucky, but she will not have me.”

The first time he had said it, it had gotten back to you through Rayal who giggled as she told you, finding the entire notion hilarious. When you asked him why he said this the next day, he simply shrugged and said, “They do not need to know if it is real. Let them believe it, it does not matter to me.” 

Now that you were nearing your twenty second year, you had assumed he had stopped needing to defend you after not hearing any teasing or taunts from others. He never led you to understand there was anything going on behind your back, just let you believe the boys had matured. The truth was that the young boys were now men, having long ago learned their lesson the hard way to stay far away from you, lest they wanted to anger the Eyktanay.

But it was on hushed whispers that you learned about his most recent incident over your honor. You had entered the communal space and quickly noticed the eyes that watched your movements and the whispers that followed you. You took less food that you would normally take, self conscious as people eyed you critically.

You sat by yourself at the evening meal as you waited for your friends to arrive, picking at your fish, but not eating much more than a few bites. The two boys must have been running late as always, seeming to always be at their own pace. The sisters were making their way across the room, stopping to line up to get food before they sat down.

“Can you believe him? Turning down my courting advances to be with her,” a voice attempted to whisper from behind you. You turned to see who it was and who they were talking about, chiding yourself for being nosy, but not able to help it. Your eyes widened to see two girls, Hiva and Elayok, already looking in your direction. Elayok wrapped an arm around Hiva’s shoulders as they glared at you.

You quickly turned back around to face forward and break eye contact. Luckily, Poeya approached at that moment, a plate full of sea food in her hand. She sat delicately beside you and turned her full attention to you, shaking her head.

“Why did you not tell me?” she asked slyly, pretending to look thoroughly displeased with you, but underneath, she seemed very happy at whatever situation she was referencing.

You tilted your head, “Tell you what?” you asked, confused.

“That you and Tonowari are courting, we could not get the full story out of him, but he admitted to it. Why was it a secret?” Rayal asked, coming to sit on your other side. 

You blinked blankly at her, “What in Eywa’s name are you talking about?” you demanded.

Poeya rolled her eyes, “The truth has been released, you do not have to act that way. Tell us everything! How did it happen?” she prodded, but you just stared, mouth agape in shock.

At that moment, whispers picked up across the room as Tonowari and Nakata entered. Nakata looked amused, as if he was about to witness a show, while Tonowari only had his severe gaze set on you. They skipped the food, weaving through the seated figures as the people looked up at them, watching closely as they stalked up to you.

Tonowari stopped in front of your seated form, Nakata moving to sit beside Poeya. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” Tonowari asked.

You stared up at him, lips held tightly closed together so that you did not have your jaw hanging open like a fish. 

“What for?” you asked dumbly. Poeya elbowed you lightly, but you ignored her as you had trained yourself to do over the years.

Tonowari winced, “Just… I just need to talk to you,” he said as a non-answer, holding out a hand to help you stand up.

Your brow furrowed over your eyes, his words and expression worrying you. “Okay,” you agreed, taking his hand. He tugged you up with more strength than you thought one capable of. You flew up to your feet so unexpectedly that you stumbled, Tonowari’s hand coming to your waist to steady you. 

“Thank you,” you muttered as he nodded and stepped away. You glanced at Nakata, whose eyes flipped between his best friend and his cousin, watching you as if he knew a secret.

Tonowari kept hold of your hand, tugging you back through the seated crowd and out through the exit.

“Tonowari, what is going on?” you asked, his nervous disposition was stressing you out. The sun had already set over the village, casting the world in a glowing deep blue as bioluminescence reflected off of and through the water. The Dorado Verde flying above called to each other as if saying goodnight.

“I messed up,” he muttered quietly over his shoulder as he dragged you through mauris and docks. He stopped when he made it to an outcropping of trees on the island, away from the village center which was built somewhat over the reef.

He turned to face you and dropped your hand, his tanhì glowing in the darkness. “You messed up? What does that mean?” you demanded, arms crossing over your chest as he sighed, running his hand over his unbraided curls. They sat around his head like a halo, smaller sections were pinned away from his face, but most of it flowed freely.

“I said some things I should not have, about you,” he sighed, “about us.”

“About us?” you muttered quietly, “What ‘us’?” you prodded further and he closed his eyes tightly, steeling himself for your reaction to his actions.

“I was hunting with Yoru today when he told me about what some of the scouts have been saying, things about you.” He shook his head as if shaking off his anger. 

“That is the problem? I am used to their insults, let them talk.” You shrugged, trying your best not to look wounded.

“I have already handled it, I’m afraid that is the problem. The details do not matter, but I may have accidentally led them to believe that we are courting. I was angry, I was not thinking,” he said, silently pleading with you with his eyes.

You scoffed, “Tonowari te Tsika’u Arvak’itan, you will tell me exactly what happened so we can fix this,” you glowered, anxiety rising in you like a tidal wave.

He clenched his jaw, his entire body wound tight as he stared down at you regretfully. You were not used to the cocky warrior looking so guilty. 

“I went to L’rilk, the one who has been spewing his sngel around the village,” he started, looking off to the ground, his eyes downcast in shame as he recounted his story. “He admitted that he insulted you, did not even try to pretend he had not.”

“What did he say?” you asked, feeling like you needed to know.

Tonowari shook his head, “It does not matter, it is not true.”

“It matters to me, tell me!” You insisted.

“No! I will not,” he exclaimed, voice raising, “I cannot utter the words. I would not disgrace you by repeating them,” he argued, shaking his head vehemently. 

“Tonowari, I can handle-”

“I know, I know you can, but you should not have to. If you really must know, you can ask a gossiping girl, but you will not hear the words from me,” he ordered with fire.

You sighed, relenting to him. “Then at least tell me how we got here. Why does he think we are courting?” you said.

“Well…” he sighed, bringing his hand to his forehead and attempting to smooth away the creases that had formed. “I went in angry and I confronted him.”

He waltzed into the alcove where weapons and tools were stored and where the very skxawng he was looking for was mending nets with his friends. A group of them were gathered together, laughing and jostling each other like young, stupid boys tend to do.

“L’rilk!” He thundered, marching up to the idiot in the middle of the group. L’rilk turned at his name, raising his brow at the newcomer.

“Tonowari, I see you, brother,” he nodded, gesturing the traditional Na’vi greeting, but Tonowari scoffed, fists clenching at his sides.

“If you saw me, then I would not have to tell you again. Do you remember what we discussed last time?” he asked lowly. “I hear from the hunters that you have been speaking badly about y/n. Is this true?” Tonowari asked for clarification, wanting to know for sure before he went into this conversation with his hackles raised.

L’rilk shrugged, “Maybe I said a few things. It is not my fault she makes a spectacle, flaunting herself in front of the men. As if they would want her, have you seen how much she eats?” he asked, snorting at the thought.

Tonowari’s eyes seemed to glow red, but it may have been a trick of the light. He stepped closer, forcing L’rilk to step back as he towered over him. “You lie about her for attention and it has gained mine. You will not speak about y/n again. You do not so much as utter her name,” he ground out, shoving a finger in L’rilk’s chest so hard that he stumbled.

"Woah!” L’rilk laughed and the rage in Tonowari’s chest bubbled. “I do not see why you always defend her. I mean, she could be considered pretty enough, for one shaped like a tulkun. I personally do not see the appeal, but to each their own," L’rilk smirked and his friends snickered behind him.

Tonowari nodded coldly, realizing L’rilk was really doing this. “You insult me with your foul speech, kurkung,” Tonowari hissed.

“I did not realize you were so fond of the girl, one might think you were courting her,” L’rilk leveled a look at Tonowari, but it did not intimidate him as L’rilk hoped. It only seemed to make him turn more fearsome. 

“And what if I was?” Tonowari ground out, as he shrugged unsparingly, “That gives me the right to challenge you to a test of skill. Or maybe I could just attack you now, do away with the formalities. I would start by cracking your ribs, one for each time you insulted her. I would beat you until you did not know up from down. Do you want that? Do you want me to embarrass you in front of your friends?”

L’rilk sobered as he spoke. “I did not know that you were truly with her or I would not have insulted her.” He shrugged, huffing out a laugh so as to not appear like he was totally being eviscerated.

“I should not have to be with her for you to show her some respect,” Tonowari ordered. He would later realize one of his mistakes from this day was never outright denying L’rilk’s accusations, too focused on his anger to think of societal repercussions for you. “You do not deserve to even look at her. You, who has never known the warmth of a woman, you are cruel in your ignorance. You are the dirt beneath her feet,” he hissed.

L’rilk’s face morphed into anger, “Who are you to speak to me like that? You are not the Olo’eyktan yet,” he snapped back.

Tonowari’s lip curved up wickedly, “I am the one who answers for y/n. Tell your friends what I have told you here today. If I hear anything being said about her, I will break each of your hands,” he threatened, glancing around the room over the downcast eyes of the scouts.

The men shifted on uneasy feet, avoiding the eyes of the Eyktanay as he turned away and stalked away from the group.

“Oh, and L’rilk?” Tonowari paused at the door, turning back to see the pale-faced man gripping his net tightly, “I will tell you this because I know it will take you a long time to figure out on your own. Real men like our woman shaped like her, it gives us something to hold onto. It seems like you might prefer little girls instead.” Tonowari flashed a grin when he saw the shocked look on L’rilk’s face as he sputtered out words of disagreement.

Tonowari did not wait for him to respond competently, just turned and marched out of the alcove and back into the village.

An hour later, when Nakata stomped into his kelku demanding answers for why the hunters, divers, and scouts were all chittering like children over the news of the Eyktanay courting his cousin, Tonowari realized he had messed up.

“You did not deny it?” you asked, after he finished telling you his heavily condensed and edited side of the story.

“I was not thinking! I was so angry. I could have hit the txanfwìngtun right then and there if I had known the Olo’eytkan would not find out,” he said, fists balling up again at his sides.

“So he thinks we like each other, that is not so bad. Let them think what they will,” you said, more in an attempt to calm yourself down.

Tonowari grimaced, “I am afraid they think our relationship is more… intimate than that,” he muttered.

Your shoulders tensed up, “What does that mean? What did you say?” you asked, although you had a feeling that you already knew.

“I told him that he did not know the touch of a woman and that if he ever said a word about you he would have to answer to me.” he shrugged as if it was no big deal.  

“Now they are saying that we have all but formally mated,” he admitted quietly and your stomach sank to your toes. “The future Olo’eyktan is expected to only have one romantic partner, if I was to be seen as fickle it would mean that I am disloyal. Our reputations are at stake. I do not have to tell you what they would say about you,” he continued.

You shook your head, not even able to focus on his words, still reeling from the fact that he even did this in the first place. “I do not see how this went on so far, you need to stop getting in trouble on my behalf!” you told him, voice raising so you hoped he understood you.

He scoffed, “I am not in trouble,” he rolled his eyes at your exaggeration. 

“Keep this up and you will be. Listen to you! You say you need to keep up a certain image, does the Olo’eyktan doubt your ability as a leader?” you argued.

“The details do not matter, what matters is how we handle this now. We have two options. We can go in there and deny everything… or…” he hesitated to continue, eyeing you nervously as you prompted him to continue. “Or we could maintain the lie.”

Your mouth fell open, “What?!” you sputtered.

“Hear me out! L’rilk will attempt to use any chink in my armor against me. If he finds me to be a liar, he will bring it to the Olo’eyktan. I do not need any more scrutiny after the Akula incident,” he begged.

“That is not a good idea, what if we were found out? That would have horrible repercussions for both of us.” you argued and he stepped closer, taking one of your hands in both of his.

“Think of what they would say if we tell them it is false. L’rilk and his friends will call my role into question and they will come down even harder on you,” he pointed out. “I will take the fall for this if you want me to, tell them you had nothing to do with any of it, but I can not guarantee it would work where we walk away unscathed. Please, this would be a favor to me, let me fix what I have broken.”

You had been made fun of by L’rilk before, you knew the sting of his words. He had stopped saying them to you directly several rotations ago, but you now realized it was because Tonowari had been fighting your battles for you.

“How many times have you had to come to my defense?” you asked quietly.

He gritted his teeth, “What does that have to-” 

“How many times, Tonowari!” you demanded.

He paused, looking guilty, “At first, once every few weeks, eventually every few months. I was handling it,” he asserted quietly.

You backed away, “Why was this kept from me?” you whispered, raising your free hand to your cheek and pressing firmly against it. The coolness of your hand eased the heat in your face the slightest bit.

“Because you did not need to know. It would only hurt you,” he explained and your eyes softened at his thoughtfulness, however misguided it was.

“We are no longer children, you do not need to defend me.”

“I wanted to,” he said, looking deeply into your eyes as if begging for understanding. 

Your resolve crumbled, not that it was ever that strong in the first place when it came to him. You knew he would have done the same for Poeya and Rayal, but your heart still picked up its rhythm at the words. He wanted to defend you, he cared enough to protect your honor. You wanted it to mean something, anything, but your mind knew what your heart ignored, he was just a friend. He would never look at you with love or affection as you wished. 

“If we do this,” you started and he visibly relaxed, ears moving forward to listen. “We need to be honest with only one another, but no one else can know,” you insisted.

He winced, “Nakata already knows.” he admitted and your eyes widened at the news.

“Tonowari!” you groaned, and he shrugged.

“He was the one who told me the news was going around, what they were saying about us. He figured it out very quickly when I stared at him like a fish!” He argued and you closed your eyes, stressed that things had become so muddled.

“What are his thoughts on the deception?” you begrudgingly asked.

“He is apprehensive, but agrees it is the best case scenario,” Tonowari said.

You sighed, respecting your cousin’s judgement. If he agreed… then you would go forward.

“Should we tell the girls then?” you asked, feeling bad at the idea of letting them believe the lie.

“No,” Tonowari shook his head, “I love Poeya and Rayal like my little sisters, but they talk too much. Our secret would be out in no time,” he pointed out and you deflated. He was right, the sisters loved to gossip like old bitties.

“That is true.” You nodded.

“Y/n, tell me what is on your mind, what are you thinking?” he asked gently.

You met his eyes, “If we do not do this, people will say I used you, even if it is not true. If they believe that something has… transpired between us, then they will only grow crueller. You know how they are, they will twist the narrative against me. That is their way,” you said, seeing the story play out in your head and hating that he was right.

Tonowari nodded, looking deep in thought by the way his eyes left yours and focused over your shoulder.

You huffed, barely believing what you were about to say, “I will do this, but you have to fix it. This cannot last forever,” you demanded and his eyes flew to you.

“Truly?” he asked, relieved.

“Yes,” you nodded in confirmation.

“Thank you, you will not regret this. We will give ourselves a month, that gives me time to work through a solution. In the meantime, we will put up the appearance of courting. What are you comfortable with?” he asked and you blinked at the question that felt so loaded.

“Uh,” your face heated at the thoughts running through your mind. “You may hold my hand, touch me if you need to, and I suppose gifts and acts of courtship would be expected from us. I trust you,” you muttered

He nodded, pride blooming in his chest at your faith in him. He hoped it was not misplaced. “And if it comes up, am I allowed to kiss you, to keep up the facade?” he asked, grinning like a troublesome boy.

You let out a laugh in surprise. “Why would you need to do that?”

He shrugged, “You never know.”

“Sure, if the situation calls for it, which it won’t, then you may kiss me,” you agreed.

He smiled, “Never say never,” he pointed at you.

You rolled your eyes, “And we will need nicknames, all the couples have them. I should come up with something truly heinous for you as punishment,” you said.

He nodded, resigning himself to your judgement. “That would only be fair,” he said. 

“I have already decided. You will be Zukzuk’tsyìp.” The small, cute creature was the opposite from Tonowari in basically every way, but the name was adorable and you knew he would hate it.

He groaned, “That is terrible," he complained and you smiled widely. 

“Then it is perfect,” you asserted. You sobered at the next thought that came to you, “Our parents… they will have to be convinced as well,” you sighed, head reeling all over again at the complexity of the lie.

“We will crest that wave when it comes. Let us get through tonight first, we have already wasted enough time, they will wonder where we have been. We will walk back in there hand in hand. Let them stare, let them talk. You will not have to work at this, let me handle the finer details. To them, I am courting you, it will be best if you only seem to accept my advances, let them think I am the lovesick fool. It works to our story,” he advised and you nodded.

“Okay, I can do that,” you nodded, but internally, you were screaming. Your crush on Tonowari had been slow and growing for years, could you handle his romantic attention knowing it was fake, knowing it had to end?

“Are you ready?” he asked, taking a deep breath and standing stiffly.

You looked at him, cocking your head to the side before reaching a hand up and pinching his lips firmly, your other hand musing his hair.

He swatted your hands away, “What are you doing?” he asked, shocked. His lips were tinged purple and looked swollen, his curls now disordered.

You looked blankly at him, “You said it yourself, they will wonder where we have been. Let them think we were being as scandalous as your words suggested,” you shrugged and he relaxed.

“Ah, I like the way you think,” he reached to you, doing the same thing. His fingers were calloused, but gentle as he pressed them into your lips. You laughed at the ridiculousness of this situation, the sound muffled. He smiled back, running a hand through your hair to puff it up and make it look slightly messy.

He took your hand in his much larger one, his fingers brushing the underside of your wrist as they wrapped around your palm. “Now we are ready,” you said.

Once you had walked back inside and braved the wide stares from your kin and peers, you sat back down in your spot, and this time, Tonowari sat next to you. He was so close that his scent lingered around you, a fresh, salty smell with undercurrents of dune grass and the water lilies that grew outside of his marui.

He rested a hand on your shoulder as you sat with your friends, being grilled on what was going on between you. You had momentarily panicked at first, realizing you had never gotten your story straight, but it turned out that you did not have to talk much. You just placed your hand on his knee and smiled shyly as he came up with a generic, but sweet story of how you supposedly accepted his courting advances.

Nakata sat in silence, arms crossed as he let Tonowari spin your web of lies. You caught his eye and he shook his head at you with a small smile gracing his lips. He seemed to be laughing at this situation, one that he apparently supported. Rayal and Poeya were overjoyed, ecstatic even as they asked question after question.

Most of the crowd from before had already dispersed to their mauris to sleep for the night. It felt like you were pushing a canoe into quiet waters before you braved the real storm further out. 

Later that night, as you sat on the dock outside of your parents home, you were glad to have a reprieve from the deception, even just until the morning. 

His fake affections were suffocating. It was terrible to know what the weight of his hand on your shoulder or the warmth of his smile felt like. It was worse to know it would never be meant for you.

Footsteps made the netting creak behind you and you turned to see your cousin, Nakata walking up to you. To sighed, knowing the conversation that was about to be had was going to be anything but pleasant. He lowered himself to sit beside you, staring out over the water with a tiny grin gracing his lips.

You sat in silence, soaking in the sound of distant waves lapping at the shore as you both collected your thoughts. 

Finally, “What have you agreed to, little cousin?” Nakata asked. His tanhì glowed in the dim light, as a curl fell over his face.

You closed your eyes, wincing at the question, because the truth was, you had no idea. “Tonowari got in too deep to dig himself out, and he did it all for me. What was I supposed to do?” you asked.

He shook his head at your predicament, “I do not envy you,” he chortled, kicking his feet languidly in the water below. 

You nodded, “It hurt today, knowing it was all fake, that he would not have done it if he did not have to,” you admitted. 

You looked up to him and he met your gaze. Your lighthearted cousin suddenly looked subdued and conflicted. Tonowari had his best friend since they were boys. No one knew him better than Nakata, but he also knew you like the back of his hand. He had seen heartbreak in your future because of your infatuation with Tonowari. 

“What do I do, Nakata? I do not know if I can handle this,” you muttered, your sudden vulnerability something you only showed to your cousin. He was your closest friend and your advisor wrapped up into one, neat package.

“You can do this, you have to. There is no way out, but through now, not without tearing down everything you have both worked for,” he pointed out.

You swallowed thickly, nodding at his words, even as they confirmed your fears and your hopes at the same time.

A part of you wanted to do this, of course you did. How could you pass up the opportunity to be near him, to be in his orbit? You enjoyed the feeling of his attention, however fleeting you knew it to be.

He pursed his lips, eyes sobering when he realized you were filled with anxiety. “Do you love him?” he asked quietly. He had watched you two together. He knew how you felt, even if he had rarely verbalized it other than a few jokes to tease you. A blind person could not miss the way you gazed at the Eyktanay.

“What?” you uttered, the word barely leaving your lips as the blood rushed out of your face.

He sighed at your suffering. “I do not really need to ask, but I will. Do you love him?”

You searched his eyes and found no malice, no humor. “Yes,” you admitted and his shoulders tensed at the confirmation.

“Then you have to be careful,” he warned. “Tonowari is my friend, we are brothers, but he is reckless. He is a good man, but he does not often think before he plunges into dangerous waters." He looked intently at you, imploring you to hear his words.

"Do not let him pull you down with him.”

Join my taglist.

Series Taglist: @edgyficuselastica (comment to be added)

Tonowari Taglist: @chaotickittenanchor @queenofviolenceandnerds @yogirlminnie @kodzuvk @saltedcoffeescotch @saibaxoxo @iconotfound @dat-bit @sapphicdecay @Julietelysythe @pearly-pebble

“I see that I am not needed here.” Ronal says after seeing all of the sky demon devices. “You are Tsahik.” Neytiri hisses out as she pulls her arm back, desperately looking at her to help her daughter. Ronal sighs and nods. “Get out! You have done nothing.” Neytiri hisses loudly at the sky demon and the avatar as they quickly gather their things and leave. “Ma Jake. Let the Tsahik handle this.”

Ronal sighs standing next to her mate. “This family is driving me insane.” She says rubbing her temple. Tonowari looks at her and mumbled something but something or someone caught Ronal’s eye. “Ronal?” Tonowari snaps her out of her gaze as she clears her throat. “Sorry I-“ she gets cut off by tonowari. “I’m sorry Ronal but you seem distracted, what’s wrong my mate? You can tell me.” Ronal beckons him to follow. They stop once they are near the sky demon ship. “Look. That demon has our tattoos.” They both look but catch eachothers tails swishing. “Oh great Eywa.” They say in unison.

(This takes place after Neteyam died ☹️ ⬇️)

“Hey norm! How did Kiris check up go?” You asked an annoyed Norm. “Terrible. Again! Jakes mate needs to stop kicking us out!” He says annoyed “well it’s very foreign to her, remember she isn’t an avatar like Jake, she’s real na’vi!” Max said. You nod your head agreeing, continuing the conversation but suddenly feel eyes burning into the back of your head and turn around, instantly regretting it as you see the Tsahik and Olo'eyktan of the clan. Quickly turning around and joining the conversation again with your face flushed “The Tsahik here scares the shit out of me man, she looks to serious and scary. I would get on my knees for her though..” you say out loud and laugh, getting weird looks from norm and max. you suddenly feel a tap on your shoulder and turn around and see them again.”oh shit you think they heard that??” You say is a panicked voice.“Oel ngati kameie Tsahik and Olo'eyktan. Is there anything I can help you with?” You say confused as to they are talking to you know after you’ve been here for awhile. “Yes, what is your name demon?” The woman says as her piercing eyes look into yours. “Uhm, y/n. Y/n L/n.” She hums looking down at your tribal tattoos and your thick wavy/curly long hair(poly boys also have long hair)”Well Y/n L/n, we need to talk to you. Now.” The man says in a deep voice giving you chills. “Oh uhm, yes of course.” You walk with them wondering what is it they need to talk to you about because this is the first time they interacted with you throughout the whole time of you coming here, they brought you to a little cave. You looked around scared and confused. But little do you know they’ve kept their eye on you.

“They definitely fucking heard me.”

Not in any way a stranger could have named, perhaps. The woven walkways were still strung between giant mangrove roots, the platforms still alive with the rhythm of hands at work, of children racing over sun-warmed wood, of nets being mended and fish being cleaned and voices rising over the endless breathing hush of the sea. But something in the air tightened all the same. The clan did not stop moving. It only moved differently, like a body drawing a breath and holding it.

You stood beside Tonowari when they arrived, just behind and slightly to his left, where the leader of the hunting parties would stand when judgment was to be watched but not yet spoken. Salt wind dragged across your skin. Your queue lay over one shoulder. The white marks of your avatar body caught the late light faintly, and though your build had always remained closer to the forest people than the reef people around you, the years had given you the easy balance of one who belonged here. Not by birth. Not by blood. But by time, by battle, by work, and by love.

It still did not stop them from looking.

You had long since learned how to feel it before you saw it. The way glances snagged on your hands, on your narrower tail, on your shoulders, on the traces that marked you as something that had not begun on Pandora no matter how deeply you had rooted yourself into it after. Most days you could let it pass like a tide under a canoe. Most days you could remind yourself that your mates had chosen you in full sight of what you were, that Tsireya’s laughter had first shaped itself around your name, that Ao’nung had once fallen asleep on your chest with seawater still drying in his hair after training. Most days it was enough.

This was not most days.

Jake Sully stepped forward carrying exile in the line of his body. Neytiri stood beside him like a drawn blade. Their children hovered near enough to their parents to show loyalty and far enough to show strain. Even before anyone said anything, the village had already seen the tails. The hands. The faces. The traces of sky-people blood riding alongside Na’vi bone.

And because the clan had seen them, the clan had thought of you.

Ronal’s gaze slid over the newcomers slowly. She did not spit the words some might have expected. She was too controlled for that, too sharp. Her judgment was worse for being clean. Her eyes rested on each child in turn, cool and measuring, then went to Jake, then back to Neytiri, then flicked once toward you before returning to Tonowari.

“They are very unlike us” she said.

That was all. Nothing louder. Nothing cruder. But the thought spread exactly as if she had named it outright. You felt it move through the gathered Metkayina like current through shallow water. Not all at once. Not boldly. Just enough. Half-breed. Strange. Wrong-shaped. Sky-touched. The same old poison dressed in softer cloth.

Tonowari spoke then, giving them uturu as his mercy demanded, because war and grief had driven them there and because he was not small enough to turn away those who came seeking sanctuary. You loved him most in moments like that. His voice was steady, his judgment larger than fear. Yet even while you loved him for it, some quieter and uglier part of you noticed that he never turned to the clan and stopped the way their eyes had slid to you too. He offered protection. He did not challenge implication.

Beside the Sullys, Lo’ak’s face set in that stubborn, bristling way boys wore when they had been cut too many times and refused to bleed where anyone could see it. Kiri stared back with painful calm. Neteyam stood straight as a spear. Tuk all but hid herself against Neytiri’s side.

Then Tsireya came up from the water, bright and curious and open as dawn, and the moment bent in a different direction for a heartbeat. Lo’ak looked at her as if the sea itself had climbed out to stare back at him. You would have laughed if the tension in the air had not still been sharp enough to cut.

Ao’nung and Rotxo ruined the moment almost immediately.

They did not begin at full cruelty. Boys rarely did when they were performing for a crowd. They started with the tails, with the shape of hands, with that dangerous tone that asked a question not because it wanted an answer but because it wanted permission to laugh. Tsireya told them to stop. Ao’nung did not listen. His eyes had gone to the Sully children with a brightness you knew too well. Not simple meanness. Worse. The thrill of sensing where the group’s cruelty would be safest, and stepping into it because it would make him bigger in their eyes.

You did not miss the way his glance brushed past you before he opened his mouth again.

That hurt more than it should have. It hurt because you knew where he had learned that comfort. Not from nowhere. Not from silence alone.

Still, the scene moved as it needed to. Tonowari assigned his children to help the Sully children learn the way of water. Only when Jake turned to him with the rigid, humiliated gratitude of a warrior accepting mercy with both hands did Tonowari glance toward you.

Tsireya was the one sent forward in the end.

That fit better than anything else could have. She was bright where the moment had gone brittle, open where the clan had narrowed in on itself, and young enough to step toward strangers without carrying quite so much of the adults’ suspicion in her bones. When Tonowari told her to show the Sullys where they would stay, she went without hesitation, all kindness and curiosity, gesturing for them to follow her deeper into the village with the easy grace that seemed to live in every part of her.

The others moved with her after a brief pause. Jake remained close to Neytiri. The children hovered around their parents, tense and watchful under so many eyes. Lo’ak looked like he wanted to stare at everything and fight half of it at the same time. Kiri was quieter, reading the village as if it might speak back if she listened hard enough. Tuk stayed tucked close. All of them followed Tsireya across the woven walkways and root-bridges while the clan watched them go.

You stayed where you were, still beside Tonowari, your face unreadable even while your thoughts moved harder than you wanted. Ronal had not said much, but she had not needed to. The clan had heard what sat underneath her judgment all the same, and because they had heard it, they had remembered you too. You could feel it in the aftertaste of the moment, in the glances that had lingered just a fraction too long before turning away.

Tonowari waited until the nearest listeners had drifted farther off before he spoke your name.

His voice was quieter now, stripped of the public weight it had carried a moment before. You looked at him, and something in his expression made you follow when he tilted his head slightly toward one of the outer platforms. It was not secrecy, exactly. More the instinct of a leader who knew when a conversation would grow teeth if it was given to the clan to overhear.

You went with him in silence.

The platform he chose sat a little apart from the nearest cluster of walkways, close enough to the village to remain within sight and far enough to let the noise of it blur into distance. Wind rolled in off the sea, carrying salt and the faint scent of algae warmed under the late sun. Below, the water shifted around the roots in restless blue-green ribbons.

Tonowari rested one hand against the rail of woven mangrove and looked out rather than at you immediately. “I want you to teach Jake Sully” he said.

You did look at him then.

For a beat, all you did was stare. Not because the request made no sense. In some ways it made too much. You were one of the strongest fighters in the clan. You understood adaptation better than most. You knew what it was to enter a people not shaped like yourself and learn anyway, hard and fast and under the pressure of never being allowed the comfort of true ignorance. Still, suspicion rose in you before duty did.

“Why me?” you asked.

Tonowari turned then, and he was too perceptive not to hear everything under the question. Not only why me because of skill. Why me when the clan has just been reminded what I am. Why me when Ronal looked at them and the people looked at me after.

His face softened, though not with pity. He had always known better than to offer you that. “Because you are capable” he said. “Because you see more than what is in front of you. Because he will need someone who understands both pride and shame if he is to learn quickly.”

Your mouth tightened. “That is not the only reason.”

“No” Tonowari admitted.

The honesty stopped you from hardening further.

He stepped closer, lowering his voice even more. “He is Olo’eyktan to his family even if he stands as refugee here. If he fails, the rest will feel it. If he is isolated, he will become harder to guide. You know warriors. You know how men like him carry humiliation. And…” He paused, studying you carefully. “There may be things in him you will understand more easily than others would.”

You held his gaze a long moment. “Because he was one of the sky-people.”

Tonowari did not flinch from it. “Yes.”

The word sat between you.

You looked away, out across the water where Tsireya’s bright figure could just be seen leading the Sullys farther along the village edge. Jake walked near the back now, his attention shifting everywhere at once despite the discipline in his posture. Soldier’s habit. Marine’s habit, maybe, though that thought came and passed before you had fully named it.

“And Ronal?” you asked at last.

Tonowari’s expression changed, not with irritation but with the knowledge that there was no use pretending that piece did not matter. “Ronal trusts you.”

“That was not my question.”

His jaw flexed once. “She will not interfere.”

You gave a short, humorless breath through your nose. “Another answer that is not the one I asked for.”

Tonowari accepted that too. “She does not like this burden being here at all” he said plainly. “But she does not doubt you. Neither do I.”

That should have eased you more than it did. Instead you found yourself searching his face for something smaller and meaner. Pity. Calculation. A hope that you would understand the Sullys because you were enough like them to make use of. Whatever he saw in your expression made his own grow steadier.

“This is not because I see you as closer to them than to us” he said, and now there was a firmness in him that left no room for retreat. “It is because I know exactly where you stand. With us. With this family. With this clan. Do not insult me by thinking I have forgotten.”

The rebuke was gentle only in tone. It landed harder for that.

You looked at him properly again. There was no hesitation in him now, no uncertainty, no crack through which old fear could crawl. For a brief moment the pressure in your chest loosened.

Then duty returned in full.

“If I do this” you said “I will not coddle him.”

Tonowari’s mouth twitched faintly. “I would be disappointed if you did.”

You folded your arms over your chest and stared out at the village once more. “And if he cannot learn?”

“Then at least he will fail honestly.”

That, more than anything, sounded like Tonowari.

Silence stretched for a few breaths. At last you nodded once. “Fine.”

Tonowari let out a breath so slight most would not have caught it. You did. He had wanted this more than he had let show. “Thank you.”

You shook your head. “Do not thank me yet.”

That almost drew a smile from him, but it faded before fully forming. Instead he stepped closer, slowly enough to give you time to refuse him if you wished. One of his hands came up to rest lightly at your waist, warm and familiar, and for a brief moment he only looked at you. Then he bent and kissed you.

It was soft, short, and almost unbearably gentle. No heat, no urgency, nothing that belonged to hunger more than affection. Just the quiet press of his mouth to yours, sweet with reassurance and the kind of love that had long since learned how to speak in smaller gestures. When he pulled back, he stayed close for only a heartbeat more before letting you go.

“I will send him to you after they settle” he said.

You watched him go.

——————————————————————

By the time Jake found you, the sun had shifted lower and the village had settled into that restless in-between hour when work had not yet ended but the worst of the day’s heat had broken. You were near one of the outer racks checking spear bindings, more to give your hands something useful to do than because the task truly needed doing. The sounds of Awa’atlu drifted around you in pieces: children splashing in shallows below, women calling to one another from the fish platforms, distant laughter, the low hush of water against root and wood.

You heard his steps before you turned.

Jake stopped a respectful distance away. For a moment neither of you spoke. Up close, it was easier to see what had first flashed at the edge of your notice before. The way he held his shoulders. The way he looked at space first, then movement, then exits, then finally people. The kind of stillness that was not ease but readiness worn so long it had become a second skin. He looked older than his face alone accounted for. More tired too.

He inclined his head slightly. “Tonowari said I’m with you.”

His Na’vi was serviceable, accented hard, each word carrying the weight of effort. You let him finish before answering.

“For now” you said.

Something in his expression shifted, not quite amusement and not quite resignation. He had likely already learned enough in the village to know that this was your version of mercy.

You set the spear aside and faced him fully. For a moment, you let the silence sit between you, weighing him properly now that the village noise had fallen farther away.

“Tonowari believes you can learn” you said at last. “I have not decided yet.”

Jake took that without visible offense. If anything, something in his posture settled, as if bluntness was easier for him to understand than politeness.

“Fair enough” he said.

You crossed your arms over your chest. “You will listen the first time. You will not argue every correction like wounded pride makes you smarter. And you will not expect me to make this easy because you were Toruk Makto, Olo’eyktan, or anything else that matters somewhere other than here.”

That finally pulled the faintest shift in his expression. Not quite amusement. Not quite irritation. More like recognition of a hard tone he had heard before in other places, under other chains of command.

“Got it” he said.

You held his gaze another beat, watching for the usual signs. Swagger. Resentment. The need to prove himself immediately. Instead you found exhaustion, discipline, and something heavier buried under both.

That did not make you trust him. It only made you think he might be worth the effort.

For one strange beat, the air between you altered. Not softer. Sharper. Recognition trying on a shape before either of you trusted it enough to name. Neither of you moved first. Neither smiled. Yet some old instinct, buried under years and planets and new bodies and new loyalties, stirred its head.

You broke eye contact first because you disliked the feeling of being read.

“Walk” you said.

Jake followed without protest. You led him down one of the narrower village paths where the platforms thinned and the sound of the central marui softened behind you. For a while you said nothing, making him keep pace over slick wood and curving roots, watching whether he looked only at where he stepped or at the full environment around him. He adapted quickly, though not gracefully. Not yet.

At last you stopped near a lower platform where the tide had come in high enough to lap against the woven supports.

“If you are to remain here” you said, turning to him “you will learn more than how to swim their way and breathe their way. You will learn when not to take up space. You will learn when pride becomes a burden for everyone around you.”

Jake absorbed that without visible offense. If anything, his gaze grew a shade more direct. “You always start this friendly?”

“No” you said. “Normally I am worse.”

That did it. One corner of his mouth moved before he could stop it.

You noticed. So did he.

It vanished almost at once.

He was silent after that, and to his credit he did not push.

That, more than the recognition itself, was what made you decide he might actually be teachable.

——————————————————————

Jake Sully learned like a man who understood that failure was no longer private.

The first few days, you gave him no softness. You made him run the shallows until his breathing turned ragged. You corrected his stance with the blunt pressure of your hand against his shoulder and the sharper crack of your voice when words failed. You showed him how to move his balance lower on the slick roots, how to enter the water without fighting it, how to watch the current rather than only the surface. You kept your explanations short in Na’vi because he needed the language in his mouth as much as the skill in his limbs. When he stumbled, you made him go again. When he swore under his breath, you pretended not to understand.

By the end of the second day, both of you knew you were pretending.

He had just surfaced from another rough dive, pushing wet hair out of his face and coughing salt from his throat, when you said, “You are still trying to win against the water.”

Jake wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That obvious, huh?”

The English snapped between you so suddenly that both of you stilled.

Then, despite everything, the corner of your mouth twitched.

“Yes” you answered in the same language. “Painfully obvious.”

He barked a laugh. It came out rougher than amused, but it was real. For the first time since arriving, some of the tightness in him loosened.

“Jesus” he muttered. “That’s nice.”

“What?”

“English. No offense, but my brain feels like it’s getting beat with a shovel half the time.”

You folded your arms over your chest and looked at him a long moment. “You are doing better than you think.”

“Yeah?”

“No.”

That got a fuller laugh out of him, and there it was again, that quick flash of recognition. Not intimacy. Not anything you needed to fear. Just the strange, immediate ease of finding another person who had once stood under the same hard sun, listened to the same dead humor, worn the same kind of damage into the body until it became posture.

From the shallows, you saw Tonowari turn his head slightly from where he spoke with a group of hunters farther up the beach.

He looked away almost at once.

You told yourself it meant nothing.

——————————————————————

What unsettled your family was not one thing. It was accumulation.

Jake began to catch more of your English when it slipped out around frustration or instinct. Once, when he planted his foot wrong on a root slick with spray and nearly went backward into the water, you grabbed his arm and snapped “Watch your footing, soldier” before thinking. He froze. Then he stared at you with dawning disbelief.

“No way.”

You let go too quickly. “What?”

“That’s marine. Nobody says that like that unless—” He laughed under his breath. “You were one too.”

You did not answer immediately. Waves lapped around your calves. Farther out, ilu rolled just under the skin of the sea like ghosts. At last you said “A long time ago.”

“Still counts.”

“Not here.”

He studied you with a little too much understanding. “Yeah. I get that.”

You hated how much you liked being understood without having to pry your chest open for it. Hated, too, how dangerous that liking could look from the outside when no one else shared the language that carried it.

So you cut the moment short and sent him back underwater.

But these things added up. A phrase here. A tone there. A curse muttered in English when he swallowed too much water and came up sputtering. The half-grin you could not quite stop when he made some dry, bitter joke about command structures and impossible missions. The day you found yourself humming under your breath while sorting spears after training and he looked up from where he knelt checking a woven net.

“Hold on” he said.

You stopped.

“No” he said, staring. “No way.”

Your fingers tightened on the shaft in your hand. “What.”

“That song.”

You had not heard that song in years. Not truly. It was old even before Pandora, older still by the time it had crossed light-years with you in memory alone. Some fragment of Earth, half nursery-rhyme, half cheap old melody from barracks speakers and scratched recordings and a place so far gone it barely felt real anymore.

You should have denied it.

Instead you said “You know it?”

Jake let out a disbelieving breath. Then, very softly, he sang the next line.

Your whole body went still.

It was absurd. It was stupid. It was nothing but a few words from a dead world carried unexpectedly into salt air and reef light. And yet the force of it hit you somewhere behind the ribs. Something old and buried sat up inside you all at once.

So you sang back.

Not loudly. Not beautifully. Your voice had never been built for softness. Jake’s was worse, rough and low and frayed at the edges. But between you the melody formed anyway, pieced together from memory and laugh-broken mistakes and the sort of embarrassed amusement soldiers learned when they recognized one another being sentimental by accident.

When it ended, the silence after felt strange.

“Damn” Jake said.

You looked away toward the horizon because your throat had gone unexpectedly tight. “Yeah...”

“That was… damn.”

You stayed quieter this time.

Neither of you noticed Tsireya standing farther down the beach with an armful of shells for a long few seconds. By the time you did, her expression had already smoothed itself into something easy. She came forward smiling, asking what the song had meant, asking what language it was, asking if you would teach her a little of it.

You answered gently. You always answered Tsireya gently.

But that night, when you returned to the family marui, Ao’nung was sharper than usual. Ronal’s attention lingered on you too long before dropping. Tonowari asked how Jake had done, and the question was ordinary, but something under it was not.

You noticed.

You said nothing.

——————————————————————

Lo’ak came to you slowly.

It began with small things. Not intimacy. Not confidence. Observation.

You were the first among the Metkayina adults to acknowledge the Sully children’s progress without loading the praise with surprise or mockery. When Kiri held her breath longer than anyone expected, you told her so plainly. When Neteyam adapted his form in the water, you nodded once and said he learned fast. When Tuk followed Tsireya through shallow reef channels without fear, you crouched to her height and told her she was brave. And when Lo’ak took an ilu ride that ended ragged but stubbornly recovered, you caught him at the shore while everyone else focused on the larger lesson and told him “You corrected quickly. That's useful here.”

He looked at you then as if he did not know what to do with approval that had no sting hidden inside it.

After that, you caught him watching you now and again. Not often. Enough.

You did not go to him at once. Boys like Lo’ak could smell pity the way akulas smelled blood. He would have bolted from it. So you waited. You watched how Ao’nung needled him, how Neteyam shielded him when he could, how Jake’s discipline fell hardest on him and Neytiri’s worry sharpened around him until both could sound like disappointment if a child heard them at the wrong angle. You watched how Lo’ak learned to grin before the next blow landed, how he bristled before anyone touched the sore place because he had learned that if he bared his teeth first people mistook it for strength.

Then came the day Ao’nung and his friends crossed too far.

It played out near the waterline with enough witnesses to make it uglier. Rotxo laughed first. Ao’nung followed, circling the Sully children with that loose-limbed swagger boys wore when they believed the world had already decided in their favor. Tails. Hands. Foreheads. The mockery came quick and mean. Kiri’s expression closed. Lo’ak stepped forward at once, ready to start the fight that had already been offered to him.

You moved before he could.

“Ao’nung.”

Your voice cracked across the space hard enough that every child there froze.

Your son turned. Shock hit first, then defiance. He had expected adults to ignore it. He had not expected you.

“Mother—”

“No.”

The word came flat as stone. You crossed the sand until you stood between the two groups, not facing the Sully children at all. Facing him. Only him.

“What do you see when you look at them?” you asked.

Ao’nung lifted his chin. Around him, Rotxo and the others went still with the instinctive caution of boys who realized too late that the game had shifted.

He said nothing.

You took one step closer. “Say it.”

His jaw tightened. “They are not like us.”

The words struck with the force of memory because you had heard them before. Not always aloud. Not always with witnesses. But enough.

“No” you said. “They are not. And yet they are under our protection. They are guests. They are children. Is this how I taught you to carry strength?”

Ao’nung’s eyes flicked away for the briefest instant. Shame. Then anger, because shame rarely came alone at his age.

“They are freaks” one of the boys muttered from behind him, too quiet perhaps in hope of escaping notice.

You heard it anyway.

So did Lo’ak. So did Kiri. So did Tsireya, who had just reached the edge of the group and gone pale.

You felt the word land inside your own ribs like a thrown stone. For one terrible instant you nearly lost your hold on your face. Nearly let them all see exactly where it had struck. But you had stood through worse than a child’s cruelty, and this was not the moment to bleed.

Instead you looked at Ao’nung and said, very quietly “Then what does that make me?”

Silence.

Not one child moved.

Ao’nung’s eyes snapped back to yours, wide for one naked second before he forced them harder again. He had not expected that. He had not expected to be made to look directly at the bridge between what he had said and who you were.

“You are not—” he began.

But he had no ending for it.

You spared him none.

“You will not speak that way again” you said. “Not of them. Not of anyone under this clan’s shelter. If you do not know how to carry your rank with honor, then you will carry nothing. Go.”

He stood frozen just long enough to reveal the child still living inside the almost-young-man shape of him. Then he turned sharply and stalked off, his friends scrambling after him in uneasy silence.

The Sully children remained where they were.

You still did not look at them immediately. Your hurt was too near the surface. You knew if you met Lo’ak’s eyes just then you might show too much.

When you finally turned, Neteyam looked wary. Kiri looked as if she had understood far more than you wanted her to. Tuk only seemed confused. Lo’ak had that same braced expression again, like he did not trust good things not to twist into something else.

So you kept it simple.

“Go with Tsireya” you said. “Training is not finished.”

Tsireya stepped forward at once, relief and loyalty all over her face, gathering the others with the soft authority that came to her as naturally as tide.

Lo’ak lingered half a second longer.

You gave him one small nod.

He went.

Only when they were gone did you let yourself breathe.

——————————————————————

That night Ao’nung found you outside the marui.

The village slept in pieces, never fully. The sea muttered against the roots. Wind moved through hanging shells and fishbone charms with a sound like soft rattling breath. You had come out because you could not bear one more look, one more half-thought, one more silence from inside. You stood on a narrow platform over dark water and let the night keep your company while the tears you had denied yourself earlier escaped anyway, quiet and furious.

You heard him before you saw him. Young warriors always thought they moved more silently than they did.

“Mother?”

You swiped at your face before turning. He saw anyway. Of course he saw. Ao’nung had always been able to read your pain more quickly than Tsireya. He simply had less practice handling it.

He stood a little distance away, no longer broad with performance. Just young. Just your son. His shoulders had lost all their earlier swagger.

“I should not have said those things” he said.

His voice was low, roughened by shame he clearly hated. You waited.

“I should not have let them say them either” he added. “It was wrong.”

Still you waited.

Ao’nung swallowed. “I was angry.”

“Angry at children?” you asked.

“No.” He stopped, jaw tight. “At… everything.”

That at least was honest.

You looked back out over the water. Moonlight silvered the surface in broken bands. “Do you know why your words hurt?”

“Yes.”

“No” you said. “You know why they upset me. That is not the same.”

He flinched. Not visibly enough for a stranger. More than enough for you.

After a moment, you went on. “When you call them freaks, when you make their bodies into something to be mocked, you are not speaking only to them. You are speaking into a wound that existed before they arrived. A wound you have seen this clan touch in me all your life whether you named it or not.”

Ao’nung’s breathing changed. Slight. Tight.

“I know” he said.

You turned then and finally looked at him fully. “Do you?”

His face worked with things he did not know how to say. Defensiveness. Shame. Pride. Fear. The ugly confusion of realizing that someone could love you fiercely and still be disappointed in the shape you were taking.

“I did not mean you” he said at last, and it was the sort of thing a child said because he still believed intent could erase impact.

Your chest ached.

“I know” you answered softly. “But it doesn't erase that I still am lime them.”

Tears burned again. You despised them. You let none fall this time.

Ao’nung took a hesitant step forward. “I am sorry.”

This time, because it was him, because he had come on his own and because he was trying in the only way he knew how, you reached out. Your hand settled briefly against his cheek.

“I know” you said.

He leaned into the touch before he caught himself. The movement was small, almost involuntary, but you felt it all the same. It broke you a little more, because for all his sharpness and pride and the cruel stupidity of what he had done earlier, there was still something achingly young in the way he sought comfort before remembering he was meant to stand tall without it.

Your hand slid from his cheek to the back of his head before you could think better of it.

“Ao’nung” you said softly.

That was all it took.

Whatever stiffness had been holding him upright gave way at last, and he stepped into you with none of his usual swagger left, leaning his weight against you as if he had forgotten for a moment how to keep it all inside himself. You drew him in without hesitation, wrapping both arms around him and holding him close. One hand spread broad between his shoulder blades while the other rested at the back of his head, keeping him there with a gentleness that only made the ache in your chest deepen.

He did not speak. Neither did you.

For a little while, the two of you only stayed that way in the dark, with the sea breathing quietly below and the night moving around the edges of the platform. Ao’nung let himself be held in a way he would have denied wanting in daylight, all the sharp edges of him gone quiet for once. You pressed a kiss to his hairline and held him tighter for a heartbeat, as though that alone could soothe every place where disappointment had cut through both of you.

When he finally pulled back, it was slowly and with visible reluctance, his face turned partly away as if he could hide how much he had needed it.

You let him have that dignity.

He swallowed once, then straightened. “Goodnight, Mom” he said, voice rougher than before.

Your hand brushed briefly over his arm before you let him go. “Goodnight, baby.”

Only after he had disappeared back into the sleeping village did you stand there alone and let the thought come that you had been keeping away.

Ao’nung had been comfortable enough to say those things because he had heard their shape before. Maybe not in those exact words. Maybe not from Tonowari’s mouth. But from the clan. From whispers. From tones. From Ronal’s colder judgments uttered when you were not near enough to answer. From silences that let implication breathe.

And if Ao’nung had learned it there, if he had learned that such thoughts were sayable, then what had Tonowari and Ronal allowed to live around your children in all these years?

Worse still, what had they themselves believed and merely loved you enough never to say?

The question lodged like a hook and would not come free.

——————————————————————

After that, Lo’ak became a shape at the edge of your days more often.

He did not come to confide in you. Not yet. But he began staying back when the others ran ahead. He lingered after lessons under excuses that fooled no one. Once, while Tsireya helped Tuk with a breathing exercise and Ao’nung wrestled some challenge out of Rotxo farther down the reef, you found Lo’ak sitting alone on a low root with his feet in the water, staring out so hard at the horizon it looked like he was trying to force his thoughts into it.

You could have left him.

Instead you sat beside him without asking.

For a while neither of you spoke. Water moved around your ankles. A school of tiny fish flashed silver below. Somewhere overhead seabirds cried.

At last you said “You glare like your father.”

Lo’ak snorted before he could stop himself. “That’s not a compliment.”

“No” you agreed. “It is not.”

He glanced at you sideways then, suspicious amusement mixing with caution.

You let the quiet stretch again until he settled back into it.

When you spoke next, your voice was lighter than the weight of the question. “Did you want to punch Ao’nung?”

Lo’ak huffed. “Kinda always.”

“Reasonable.”

That earned you a real look. The first one not filtered through wariness.

You did not smile. Not much. Just enough.

A little of the tension left him. “You were really pissed.”

“Yes.”

“Because he was being a skxawng.”

“Yes.”

Lo’ak nudged water with one foot, watching the ripples. “And because of the other thing.”

There it was.

You turned your face toward the sea again. “Yes.”

He was quiet a long while after that. Then he asked, too casual to be casual “Does it bother you?”

You could have lied. You almost did. But something in the set of his shoulders stopped you.

“Of course it does.” you said.

Lo’ak looked down at his hands. Five fingers. Strong. Capable. Wrong, to some eyes. He flexed them once.

“Oh” he said.

It was such a small sound. Such a bare one. It carried more than any long confession would have.

You understood then, with a painful clarity, that no one had told him what he needed to hear. Not in a way that had sunk in. Not enough times. Not with the right weight.

So you spoke carefully, because some truths had to be laid in a boy’s hands like knives turned hilt-first.

“Listen to me, Lo’ak. The shape of your body does not lessen you. Not your hands. Not your tail. Not your face. Not any piece of you. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to make themselves feel pure by cutting someone else smaller. That is not truth. That is cowardice.”

He stared straight ahead. You were not certain he was breathing.

“You are Na’vi” you went on. “You are your father’s son and your mother’s son. You are yourself beyond both of them. You do not have to earn personhood from people who look at you and see only what is different. Do you understand me?”

Lo’ak’s throat moved.

“Maybe” he muttered.

“Then I will say it again another day.”

That made his mouth twitch a little. Not quite a smile. Near enough.

And because he was still a boy, because the ache in him had not erased the impulse to test, he said “You really think I’m perfect?”

“Nobody is” you said at once.

His head whipped toward you, offended.

You let him stew half a second before adding “You are loud, impulsive, and you make decisions like someone throwing knives blind in the dark. But none of that has anything to do with the body you were born into.”

Lo’ak barked a laugh so sudden it startled both of you.

You joined him. Very briefly.

From then on, he sought you more.

Not always alone. Sometimes he just drifted toward wherever you were helping set lines or checking spears or returning from a hunt, offering clumsy help he would never have offered before. Sometimes you found him with Tsireya and Tuk, and he was easy there, gentler. Sometimes he caught you between duties and asked sharp questions about fighting, or hunting, or how long it had taken you to feel like you belonged in reef water. Sometimes he said nothing at all, only sat near enough that the silence became company.

The Sullys noticed. So did your family.

Jake and Neytiri, to their credit, did not pry. You saw the awareness in Jake’s eyes, the cautious gratitude in the way he sometimes let Lo’ak drift toward you without calling him back. Neytiri watched too, more guarded, but she recognized help when she saw it. She simply did not know its shape.

Your own family did not have that grace.

Tsireya’s jealousy came first and hurt the least. She grew clingier in small ways, touching your arm more often, leaning against you when she spoke, asking if you would braid shells into her hair that evening or come see some little thing she had found in the tide pools. It was not suspicion. It was fear of displacement. You answered it at once, gathering her close whenever you returned home, pressing kisses to her forehead, telling her stories while you worked her braids loose and redid them, letting her fall asleep with her head in your lap when the nights grew longer.

Ao’nung’s came in the form of watchfulness. He did not mention Lo’ak directly. He simply observed too much and went sharp around the edges whenever he found you speaking to the Sully boy alone. Shame still sat between the two of you after his apology, not healed, only softened over. That made everything worse.

Tonowari and Ronal felt different.

They held it in. They trusted you, and because they trusted you they hated the feeling all the more. You could see it in what they did not say. Tonowari lingering longer after evening meals, listening when you spoke of training but not asking the questions beneath his quiet. Ronal watching your face when Jake’s name came up and then turning away before the glance could become accusation. Their discomfort did not come from believing you unfaithful. Not yet. It came from seeing parts of you open in ways they had never been invited into.

That was what jealousy often was at its core. Not fear of replacement. Fear of exclusion.

You almost understood it enough to forgive.

Almost.

——————————————————————

The fracture deepened before it broke.

You began hearing things you had never let yourself fully hear before. A pause in conversation when you approached. A woman on a fish platform lowering her voice just a breath too late. A boy saying something under his breath about sky-blood and getting hissed into silence by his sister. None of it new, perhaps. Only newly impossible to ignore once Ao’nung had put shape to it in front of you.

And Ronal, for all the love between you, did not help.

She was not careless with you. Never that. In private she touched you with certainty, trusted your judgment in battle, shared the weight of the children and the home and the clan’s expectations. But she had always kept a harder core than Tonowari, and in moments where the Sullys were discussed her words carried enough old disdain to stir every insecurity you had spent years trying to bury. She did not call them demons. She did not need to. A tone could do the work. A look. A certain refusal to separate strangeness from contamination.

Each time, you said nothing.

Each time, something in you bent a little further.

Then came the day you learned she had spoken more plainly when you were not there.

Not from Tonowari. Not from some dramatic confrontation. From chance. From walking behind a half-screened section of woven wall and hearing the tail end of a conversation between Ronal and two women who had come seeking her counsel. You only caught enough to understand. The Sully children. Their bodies. Their blood. The risk of letting too much of the sky-people remain in the heart of the clan. Ronal’s voice cool and unsparing. Not once your name spoken, but you heard yourself in every omission.

You left before they saw you.

That night you could not eat.

When Tonowari asked what was wrong, you said you were tired. Ronal looked at you too long and said nothing. Ao’nung picked at his meal. Tsireya chatted about some little thing from the reef until even she felt the heaviness and fell quiet.

You slept badly. When morning came, you threw yourself harder into your duties.

No one stopped you.

——————————————————————

The argument began with almost nothing.

That was the cruel part. The worst fights often did.

You had spent half the day with the hunting parties and the latter part of the afternoon checking on the younger trainees. By the time you returned to the marui, salt dried tight over your skin and exhaustion sat meanly in your bones. The family meal was nearly ready. Tsireya was helping set woven plates in place. Ao’nung was cleaning a spearhead with too much force. Tonowari sat mending something with hands that only looked calm. Ronal had her back partly to you, sorting herbs and shells for medicines, her profile sharp in the slanting gold light.

You entered and the shift in the marui was immediate, small but noticeable all the same. Tsireya brightened first, coming to you at once, and you kissed her forehead as naturally as breathing. Your hand rested briefly on Ao’nung’s shoulder as you passed, even though he did not look up, his attention fixed too carefully on the spearhead in his hands.

Tonowari’s eyes found you next.

He was seated near the center of the space, broad shoulders slightly bowed over the piece of mending in his hands, but the moment he saw you he straightened a little. Not enough to make it obvious. Just enough that you caught it. His gaze moved over your face in one quick, quiet check, as though measuring your tiredness, your mood, the weight you had brought back in with you from the day. When you paused near him, he reached out and let his fingers brush lightly over your wrist. It was a small touch, gone almost as soon as it happened, but it carried the kind of familiar care that long years built into instinct.

“You are late” he said.

There was no reprimand in it. Only notice.

“Work took longer” you answered.

Tonowari gave a low hum and let his hand fall away, though not before his thumb brushed once against your skin. “Sit when you are done. You have not rested enough these past days.”

Before you could answer, Ronal looked up from where she sat sorting herbs and shells into neat little groupings by her side.

Her expression was harder to read, as it often was when others were near, but you knew her too well not to catch the brief pause in her hands when you stepped fully into the marui. She looked at you for a moment longer than necessary, her gaze moving over the damp salt dried into your skin, the tension still holding across your shoulders, the faint exhaustion under your eyes. Then she clicked her tongue softly, almost under her breath.

“You pushed too far again" she said.

The words should have sounded sharp. From anyone else, they would have. From Ronal, they carried that familiar edge of concern dressed in sternness, the shape it most often took when she did not want to soften herself in front of the children.

You exhaled through your nose, too tired to fight the gesture for what it was. “I am still standing.”

“Yes, Ronal said, dry and unimpressed. “And you think that is always the same as being well.”

Tsireya hid a smile at that, clearly having heard the argument before.

For the briefest moment, your eyes met Ronal’s properly. Something quiet passed there. Not tenderness made obvious. Never that, not in front of everyone. But something steady and known, something that had lived in the spaces between the three of you for too long to need much dressing.

You shook your head faintly, more to yourself than to either of them, and moved at last to wash.

——————————————————————

It could have ended there.

Instead Ronal said, without turning “Lo’ak was looking for you again.”

The words were ordinary. The tone was not.

You stilled with water running over your fingers.

“I saw him” you said.

“Mm.”

That sound. Small. Dismissive. Heavy with all the things left unsaid.

You dried your hands slowly and faced her. “If you wish to say something, say it.”

Tsireya froze. Ao’nung’s head lifted. Tonowari’s hands went still over the mending in his lap.

Ronal turned then. Her face was controlled, but not enough. “You spend much time with him.”

“He needed guidance.”

“He has parents.”

The words landed harder than they should have because you had given your life to children who were not of your body and never once resented it. Because you knew exactly where your deepest insecurity lived. Because Ronal knew it too.

“So do ours” you replied, voice already sharpening. “Yet that has never stopped me from raising them.”

Tonowari looked up fast. “Enough.”

“No” you said without taking your eyes off Ronal.

Ronal set down the herbs in her hands one by one with terrifying care. “The clan sees. The people speak.”

“And you listen.”

Her nostrils flared. “I am Tsahìk. I hear what moves through my people.”

“You let it move.”

“That is not the same.”

“No?” Your laugh came sharp and ugly. “Then tell me, Ronal, when they look at the Sully children and see something tainted, something wrong-shaped, something less, do you think I do not know what else they are seeing in that moment?”

Tonowari stood. “Y/n—”

“DO NOT.” You barely spared him a glance.

The words came out so loud and raw that the whole marui seemed to freeze around them.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. No one even breathed properly. It was not only the force of it. It was the fact that none of them could remember the last time they had heard you scream at all, much less heard it turned on one of them. Not Tonowari. Not Ronal. Not the children. You were not gentle by nature, not always soft, but this was different. This was something torn straight out of the center of you, stripped of discipline and pride and every careful restraint you usually kept wrapped tight around your hurt.

Silence crashed into the marui so hard even the sea beyond seemed to retreat.

Ronal’s chin lifted higher. Hurt had reached her now, and pride arrived right behind it. “You are twisting this.”

“Am I?” Your voice rose. “Ao’nung did not learn those thoughts from water and wind. He learned them here. In this clan. In this home. In the things said when I am not present and the things not challenged when I am.”

Ao’nung jerked upright. “Mother—”

“Be silent.”

The words cracked out of you with a force that seemed to stun even yourself.

Ao’nung went still at once. So did everyone else. It was not simply that you had snapped at him. It was that none of them were used to this version of your anger, this loud, shaking, barely-contained thing that tore out of you without the usual control wrapped around it. You could be stern. You could be sharp. But this was different, and the shock of hearing it turned on him kept Ao’nung rooted where he stood.

Ronal’s eyes flashed. “You accuse me of turning my son against you?”

“I accuse you of feeding him poison and calling it caution.”

Tsireya made a strangled sound. Tonowari stepped between you by instinct, but you moved sideways before he could block the line of the fight.

The words struck. Not because they were true in the way she meant. Because some part of them touched something real.

Your face twisted, more wounded than angry for one naked second.

“Never offered you?” you shot back. “You speak as though you ever reached for them.”

Ronal went still.

You laughed once, harsh and shaking. “Do you know how many times either of you asked about where I came from? About the life before this one? About the language still living in my mouth? About the things I lost?” Your voice rose again, raw with old hurt now, with something far older than the Sullys and this argument and even the clan’s whispers. “You accepted that those parts of me existed, yes, but you never wanted to stand too close to them. Never wanted to know them unless they could be made useful, or small, or easy to set aside.”

Tonowari’s expression changed at that, guilt flashing through it before he could hide it.

You did not spare him either.

“I did not hide those pieces because I wished to keep you out,” you said, voice breaking around the force of it. “I kept them quiet because no one asked. Because no one looked at those wounds and wondered what they were made of.”

The silence that followed hurt worse than shouting.

You had kept those fragments hidden. Not maliciously. Not knowingly. But because pain went silent when no one around you shared its language and because the ones who claimed to love you had never truly learned how to ask for it.

“You think I would betray you for friendship?” you asked, voice trembling now with fury.

“I think” Ronal snapped, and now she was shouting too “that demons return to their own. I think perhaps you feel the pull of sameness and do not know it. I think perhaps that is why you go so often where you are reflected.”

Everything in you went cold.

Tonowari moved at once. “Ronal.”

But she was too far inside the blow already. You saw regret hit her only after the words were gone.

You stared at her. “Do you see me only as a demon, then?”

Ronal was breathing hard. Wounded pride, jealousy, fear, and years of buried prejudice had tangled too tightly to unwind cleanly. In that moment she chose anger because anger felt stronger than retreat.

“Yes” she said, in a voice that shook. “In this, yes. What else calls a mated woman away so often if not the demon in her? What else lets her laugh and sing and hide herself with another male as though the bond of her family is not enough?”

Tsireya began to cry.

The sound barely reached you. Your ears were roaring.

You stepped forward so fast Tonowari actually reached out to catch your arm and missed. “You dare” you said, each word raw. “You dare accuse me of cheating while standing in the home I built with my own hands. While speaking to the children I fed, bathed, taught, held. While wearing medicines I gathered and skins I cured and weapons I sharpened. You dare call me demon after I gave you every piece of my fucking life?!”

Ronal’s face crumpled for a heartbeat under the force of it, but you were beyond mercy now.

“You put those thoughts into Ao’nung’s mouth” you went on, voice breaking louder. “Do not deny it. He did not invent that cruelty. He learned from the contempt you carry when you think I am not looking.”

“I was protecting this family!” Ronal shouted back.

“By teaching our son to despise people like me?”

Ao’nung surged to his feet then, shaking with his own helpless rage and terror, too young and too proud and too frightened for either of you.

“Stop talking to her like that!”

You turned on him in disbelief. “To her?”

His chest rose and fell fast. “She is my mother.”

The words hung. Not wrong. Not enough.

Pain and fury made you crueler than you meant to be. “And I am what, then?”

Ao’nung’s face twisted. For a second you saw him realize the cliff edge. He stepped anyway.

“You are not even my true mother” he spat. “You are not my real parent.”

The world stopped.

There were sounds after. Tsireya sobbing. Tonowari barking Ao’nung’s name in horror. Ronal’s sharp inhale like she had been stabbed. But all of it came from very far away. What you heard most clearly was the split inside your chest. Clean. Final. A thing tearing where you had thought it had grown too strong to tear.

Tonowari crossed to you quickly, hands half raised. “Y/n, listen to me—”

“No.” You reeled back from him too. “NO. NOT ONE OF YOU.”

Tsireya ran forward then and you almost broke on the sight of her, but you could not stay. Could not breathe inside that marui another second.

You snatched up the nearest things that were yours. A wrap. A knife. Your bow. A small satchel hanging from a peg by the entrance. Tonowari called your name. Ronal did too, and hers sounded ruined now, but you could not hear anything except the echo of demon and not my true mother and the older, deeper voice inside yourself whispering the worst of all.

You could not even give them children.

Perhaps that was what had always sat beneath it. The old failure. The body that had crossed worlds and changed shape and still would not do this one thing the clan understood without question. You had told yourself for years it did not matter, because Tsireya and Ao’nung were yours in every way that counted. But pain was a scavenger. It dragged up every buried bone when called.

You fled before you screamed.

You climbed until your hands bled.

Not badly. Just enough for the sting to keep you in your body when grief wanted to blast you out of it. You left the clustered marui of the village behind, crossed a tangle of roots and tide-cut stone, and found one of the old trees farther inland where mangrove gave way to the slightly drier edges of forest. There, high above ground and water both, you wedged yourself into the cradle of thick branches and finally let the collapse come.

It was not graceful. It was not quiet.

You cried until your chest cramped and your throat felt flayed raw. You hit the trunk once with the heel of your hand hard enough to bruise. You cursed in English because Na’vi felt too sacred for the ugliness in you and because no one was there to hear Earth’s dead language anyway. Then you curled in on yourself with your forehead pressed to bark and shook like something hunted.

You thought of Ao’nung as a small child reaching for you from Ronal’s arms the first time he had chosen to come to you without prompting. You thought of Tsireya feverish and half asleep, her fingers tangled in your braid while you sat up all night cooling her skin with damp cloths. You thought of Tonowari holding you after hunts gone bad, of Ronal’s mouth at your shoulder in the dark, of every year you had given to this family, this place, this life built on the bones of another.

Then you thought of the clan’s eyes on you when the Sullys arrived. Of Ronal saying unlike us. Of whispers. Of silences. Of Tonowari never quite cutting them off. Of every time you had chosen gratitude over fury because love seemed more important than being right.

The night gave you too much room to think. Sleep would not hold for long, and every time you drifted close to it your mind kicked you back awake with something sharper waiting. So you lay there in the cradle of branches staring through gaps in the leaves at scraps of dark sky and let yourself wander somewhere crueler.

Your thoughts found Lo’ak because of course they did. Not just Lo’ak as he was now, all sharp edges and stubborn pride and hurt packed into the shape of a boy trying not to show where the world had bruised him, but Lo’ak as he had been when he was smaller, when his hands had still looked too big for the rest of him and his ears and brows and fingers had marked him out before he could even understand why people were staring. You thought of the way eyes lingered. The way silence changed texture around him. The way even kindness could turn ugly when it carried pity underneath.

And then, against your own will, your mind made the leap. If you had ever carried a child of your own here, if Eywa or fate or whatever force ruled these things had ever placed that life in your arms, would they have looked like that too. Would they have had your blood written into them in all the ways this world knew how to notice and punish. Five fingers. Strange bone structure. Some soft human wrongness visible beneath Na’vi skin. Something beautiful to you, maybe, because it would have been yours, because it would have been theirs, because love would have made every difference sacred. But not beautiful to everyone else. Not safe.

The thought hollowed you out in a new place. Because once it came, another followed it, quieter and somehow worse. Maybe Tonowari and Ronal had known. Maybe not in words, not in any deliberate, spoken way, but somewhere deep and practical and afraid. Maybe some part of them had always been relieved that no child had ever come from your body. Relieved that they had been spared the risk of loving a child the clan might look at the way they looked at Lo’ak. Relieved that they had been spared explaining your traits in the face of tradition, in the face of gossip, in the face of that old, ugly instinct to sort the acceptable from the strange.

You shut your eyes hard enough to see color behind them, but it did nothing. The thought kept gnawing. Not because you truly believed they would reject such a child once placed in their arms. That was what made it hurt in a different way. You knew Tonowari would have loved fiercely. You knew Ronal, for all her pride and sharpness, would have fought like a knife for anything she called hers. But love after the fact was not the same as wanting before the fact. It was possible to love deeply and still feel relief at being spared a harder road. Possible to adore you and still be grateful that you had not given them a child who would carry the most visible proof of what set you apart.

Your stomach turned. Suddenly the old grief was tangled with something meaner, more humiliating. It was one thing to wonder whether they had ever looked at you and seen difference they tolerated because they loved you. It was another to imagine they had looked at your empty hands, your empty womb, and thanked the stars in some quiet hidden corner of themselves that it had stayed that way.

You pressed the heel of your hand over your mouth to hold in the sound that wanted out. Below you, the forest breathed and shifted and remained indifferent. Somewhere distant, water moved against root and stone. You thought of Lo’ak again, of the set of his jaw every time he pretended he did not care, and something inside you cracked with a tenderness so painful it felt almost like guilt. Because if a child of yours had looked like him, you knew with horrible certainty that you would have loved them past language, past reason, past fear. You would have torn the world open with your bare hands before letting anyone make them feel lesser for it.

And that, perhaps, was the sharpest wound of all. That no such child had ever existed, and yet you were grieving them anyway. Grieving the possibility. Grieving the shape of a life you had never let yourself hold long enough to name. Grieving the chance that perhaps, somewhere under all this hurt, you had wanted more than you had ever admitted. Not just mates. Not just a place. Not just borrowed children who had become yours through devotion rather than blood. Something smaller and more dangerous. Someone who might have carried your difference openly into the light, forcing everyone around you to reveal exactly how much of your strangeness they could truly bear.

For a long time after that, you did not sleep at all.

——————————————————————

Morning did not fix anything.

That, perhaps, was the hardest part. Dawn came all golden over the water as if the world had not been split open. The village woke. Nets were lifted. Fish gutted. Children called to one another. Duties remained, indifferent to heartbreak. So did you.

You returned at first light only long enough to wash your face in cold water and tie your hair back properly. Then you went straight to your responsibilities. The hunters needed directing. Tracks from the night tides needed reading. Two younger warriors had argued over spear allocation. A net line had torn along one of the outer shallows and needed stronger hands to repair it before midday.

The clan saw you.

Of course they did. Word had already spread. You could feel it in the way voices lowered when you passed, in how no one quite dared ask anything. Their curiosity warred with the very obvious truth written in your face. So they watched instead.

Let them, you thought.

If they expected you to vanish because your heart had been broken in private, they did not know you at all.

By noon Tonowari found you near the storage platforms where dried lines and harpoons were kept. He approached alone, which was at least wise.

You did not turn when you heard him.

“Y/n.”

You kept checking a spear haft for warp.

He stopped a careful distance away. “Please.”

That made you laugh once under your breath. Not kindly. “You ask for gentleness now?”

Tonowari absorbed the blow without flinching. “I ask for a chance to speak.”

You finally looked at him then. He wore grief openly. Guilt too. It would have moved you yesterday. Today it only hurt.

“Where was this chance” you asked “when I needed you to stop the clan from looking at me like I was something lesser the moment the Sullys arrived? Where was it when Ronal spoke and let implication do its work? Where was it when Ao’nung learned those thoughts under our roof?”

His face tightened. “You think I don't know I have failed. I know I have.”

“Then let that knowledge keep you company.”

He stepped forward despite the warning in your posture. “I did not think—”

“No” you cut in. “You did not. That is exactly it.”

For a second you saw anger spark in him too, not at you but at himself, at the impossibility of saying enough. Then it died. He stood there broad and wounded and unable to mend with strength what strength had failed to protect.

“I love you” he said simply.

Pain sliced fresh through your ribs. “Then you should have protected me better.”

You walked away before he could answer.

——————————————————————

Tsireya came later.

Where Tonowari approached like someone handling a blade, Tsireya came like she always came to you: quickly, heart first, tears already threatening. You found her near the outer shallows because she had clearly searched until someone told her where you were. The moment she saw you, she ran.

You caught her automatically. There had never been a world where you would not.

Her arms wrapped around your waist so tightly it almost hurt. You dropped to your knees in the wet sand at once to hold her properly. She was crying before she even tried to speak. You kissed her forehead again and again, smoothing damp hair back from her face, murmuring broken comforts in Na’vi and half-English endearments that survived from a life she had never known.

“None of this is your fault” you told her. “None of it. Do you hear me?”

Tsireya nodded against your neck and cried harder.

You rocked her a little, because once upon a time that had been enough to calm every storm she brought to you. “You did nothing wrong.”

“I should have said something” she choked out. “I should have stopped them sooner. I saw Ao’nung growing mean and I thought he would soften. I should have—”

“No.” You tipped her face up until she looked at you. “You are not responsible for carrying what the adults failed to carry. Not you.”

Her mouth trembled. “Come home...”

That nearly broke you all over again.

You drew her in and held her. “I cannot” you whispered.

“Not ever?”

Your throat closed. You made yourself answer honestly. “Not yet.”

Tsireya nodded because she was kinder than anyone deserved and because she understood even when understanding hurt. She clung to you another minute, then let you wipe her face with your thumbs as if she were still little enough to fit entirely in your lap.

When she left, she looked back three times.

You watched every step.

——————————————————————

The family felt your absence exactly as you knew they would.

Not because you flattered yourself irreplaceable. Because every home had a rhythm, and you had been part of theirs for too long not to leave silence where your habits belonged. No second pair of hands to catch the small work before it fell. No evening rounds through the marui checking straps, medicines, children, weapons, weatherproofing. No body dropping tired beside theirs at the end of a long day. No one to laugh first when Tsireya made some bright joke. No one to sharpen Ao’nung’s practice blade after he had abused it against coral. No one to shoulder against Ronal while sorting herbs. No one to trade a quiet look with Tonowari across a crowded family meal.

Absence was never just emptiness. It was the shape of all the things that failed to happen.

Ao’nung felt it hardest after the first shock passed. Shame made him restless. Restlessness made him stupid. He trained too hard, snapped too fast, and once nearly got himself clipped by a reef edge because his focus was split in six directions at once. Tonowari hauled him out and cursed him senseless for it. Ao’nung took the scolding without fighting back because his thoughts were somewhere else entirely.

Ronal carried hers more inwardly. She did her work. She led. She helped heal. She moved through the village with the same proud spine and uncompromising hands. But she slept poorly, and when she thought no one watched her eyes went to doors, walkways, platforms, the outer edges of the village where you should have been appearing any minute with wet hair and sea-salt on your skin and some tired complaint ready on your mouth.

Tonowari wore his like a stone tied around the chest. He had always been large enough to contain pain without spectacle. That did not make it smaller.

You did not see all of this firsthand.

You only saw enough to guess the rest.

And still you did not return.

——————————————————————

It was Lo’ak who found you on the second evening after the fight, though not by design.

You were coming back from the outer roots with a bundle of repaired line over one shoulder and a small catch looped at your hip when you spotted him sitting alone where mangrove shadows met the darkening water. He did not hear you at first. His posture gave him away before his face did. Folded in. Guard up. Something raw fresh in him.

You almost kept walking.

Then you remembered how it felt to be left alone with hurt large enough to swallow speech.

So you went to him.

He looked up fast when your steps reached him, visibly startled, then awkward. “Oh. Hey.”

You set the repaired line aside and lowered yourself onto the root beside him. “You choose lonely places.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Guess so.”

You studied him in profile. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Mm.”

Lo’ak huffed. “You do that thing.”

“What thing?”

“That thing where you act like you already know I’m full of crap.”

“I do already know.”

He gave you a sideways look. Even in the gloom you could see the fight between pride and relief.

At last he muttered “Dad got on my ass again.”

“About?”

“Everything.” He kicked lightly at the water below. “The ilu stuff. The diving. Ao’nung. Me not thinking. Me thinking too much. Pick one.”

You listened.

“He doesn’t say I’m messed up or anything” Lo’ak said after a moment, staring hard at the darkness. “Not like that. He just… with Neteyam it’s always trust and expectations and all that warrior stuff. With me it’s like he’s waiting for the next screwup.”

There was no accusation in his voice by the end. That made it sadder.

“And your mother?” you asked.

Lo’ak shrugged again. “Mom loves me. She just…” He grimaced. “She just doesn't say he isn't right.”

You sat with that.

After a while you said “When people are afraid for someone, they often speak badly. They think fear will sound like discipline if they make the voice hard enough.”

Lo’ak snorted faintly. “That doesn’t make it suck less.”

“No” you agreed. “It does not.”

Silence. Then, softer, he asked “Did you mean it?”

You turned toward him. “Mean what?”

“What you said before.” He did not look at you. “About me.”

You understood.

“Yes” you said. “I meant it.”

Lo’ak swallowed. The dark hid his eyes, but not the tremor that went briefly through the line of his jaw.

“Okay” he murmured.

Nothing dramatic followed. No collapse into confession. No sudden ease. He only sat there beside you a little longer than before, and when you rose to leave he rose too and carried half the repaired line without you having to ask.

Sometimes trust entered by the smallest door.

——————————————————————

By the third night, the ache in you had sharpened into something cleaner.

Not less painful. Clearer.

You knew you could not keep sleeping in scattered places forever. You also knew you would not return to the marui only because they missed the space you filled in it. Missing you was not enough. Love was not enough. Not when love had left certain injuries untouched for years because addressing them would have required discomfort.

So when dusk deepened and your feet turned almost without thinking toward the old path that led to the spirit place the Metkayina kept near the inland meeting of root and freshwater, you let them.

The Tree of Voices. Mangrove-wrapped, sea-breathed, threaded with swaying tendrils that caught moonlight in pale glows. The place always quieted you. Tonight it only made you careful.

You saw Ronal before she saw you.

She floated near the top of the great tree, posture bowed in a way you had almost never witnessed from her. Not weakness. Pleading. Real pleading. It stopped you cold enough that your first instinct was to turn away before she looked up.

You pivoted.

“Please.”

Her voice cracked on the one word. You froze with your back half turned.

For a long moment neither of you moved. Then slowly, because running now would have been a kind of cruelty and because some exhausted, still-loving part of you could not do that to her, you turned back.

Ronal had risen to her feet. In the silver-blue light her face looked carved from grief. She came no closer until you allowed it by staying still.

“Do not leave” she said.

“I already left.”

“You know what I mean.”

Yes. You did.

The wind shifted. The floating tendrils stirred. Somewhere beyond the roots, water moved over stone.

You folded your arms hard across your chest. “You have words now.”

Ronal closed her eyes briefly. “I should have had them sooner.”

“That is not apology. That is observation.”

Her gaze came back to yours, wet and unshielded in a way that startled you more than any shouted argument had. “Then hear this. I was wrong.”

The simplicity of it hit harder than defense would have.

She took one slow breath. “I was jealous. I was afraid. I heard pieces of you I could not share and instead of asking for them, I made them suspect. I let the clan’s uglier thoughts sit too near me. I told myself I was protecting what was ours, when in truth I was protecting my pride. And when I was hurt, I used the cruelest words I could find because I knew where to wound you.”

Your jaw tightened so hard it hurt.

Ronal’s voice shook more now, but she did not look away. “No. I do not see you only as demon. I do not even see you as demon at all. I see my mate. I see the woman who has stood beside me through blood and storm and birth and grief. I see the one who raised my children as wholly as if they had first quickened under her own heart. I see the one I hurt because I was not strong enough to master my fear before it mastered my mouth.”

Pain and love and fury all surged at once so violently you nearly stepped back.

“You said it” you whispered. “You cannot unsay it.”

“I know.”

“You let those thoughts live around our son.”

“I know.”

“You let the clan’s whispers touch me for years.”

Ronal’s face crumpled. “I know.”

There it was. No defense. No reaching for context before accountability. It left you without the clean fuel of rage.

You hated that.

“And what of Ao’nung?” you demanded, because if you could not keep striking her, perhaps you could at least keep from softening. “What of Tonowari? What of the fact that none of you protected me where protection should have been simple?”

At that Ronal’s eyes filled properly and one tear slid down without her wiping it away. “Then do not forgive us yet.”

The words hit so unexpectedly you stared.

She took a step closer. Stopped. Waited. “Be angry. Stay angry. Ask more of us than one night of grief. But do not stay gone while we try to become better than the people who wounded you. Come where we can answer. Punish me with your honesty if you must. Not with your absence.”

Your throat worked uselessly around an answer.

Then Ronal, proud Ronal, fierce Ronal, lowered herself to her knees before you.

It was not dramatic. That made it worse. Better. Truer.

“I am asking” she said, voice almost breaking fully now. “Come back and let me mend what I can. Even if it takes long. Even if you do not touch me. Even if you do not call me beloved for many nights. Come back.”

Something inside you gave way then, not into easy forgiveness but into the terrible truth that you loved her still. Loved her enough that the sight of her bowed hurt almost as much as what she had done.

You crouched before you knew you meant to. Your hands found her face roughly, as if you could still be angry through touch. Ronal leaned into your palms with a shuddering breath.

“If you ever say those things again—”

“I will spend the rest of my life earning the right not to.”

You exhaled, shaking. “That is not how forgiveness works.”

“No” Ronal whispered. “But perhaps it is how atonement begins.”

For a long moment you stayed there, hand on her face, anger still alive and grief still raw and love refusing to die under either. Then footsteps sounded behind you, hesitant and stopping short.

Tonowari.

Ao’nung.

Tsireya.

Of course.

You looked over your shoulder. Tsireya was already crying again, though more quietly now. Tonowari’s expression was almost painfully careful, hope warring with the knowledge he had no claim to it. Ao’nung looked worst of all. Stripped bare by shame. Younger than he had in years.

He took two steps forward and stopped so abruptly he nearly stumbled.

“Mother” he said, and his voice cracked so badly you closed your eyes.

When you opened them, he was crying too. Not prettily. Not with dignity. Like a boy who had discovered too late that words could not be taken back just because terror came after.

“I was wrong” he blurted. “I was angry and stupid and I wanted to hurt and I said the worst thing I could think of because I knew it would hit and I hate myself for it and I know that is not enough and I know I am yours, I know that, I know it, and I am yours too if you still want me, please—”

He broke there.

Tsireya covered her mouth, sobbing. Tonowari looked away briefly as if the sight of his son’s grief struck somewhere too tender to witness directly. Ronal, still kneeling beside you, made no move to intervene. Wise again, for once. Let him say it.

You rose slowly and faced Ao’nung fully.

He flinched before you even touched him.

That nearly undid you.

“What you said” you told him, voice low and steady only by force “will stay with me for a very long time.”

He nodded frantically, tears falling. “I know.”

“You do not get to speak from pain and call the damage smaller because you did not mean all of it.”

“I know.”

“You are my son" you said, and his face broke open entirely. “You are my son whether blood says it, or the sea says it, or Eywa herself says nothing at all. But if you ever weaponize that wound again, I will not spare you for your age.”

Ao’nung was crying too hard to answer properly. He nodded anyway.

Then, because you were never not his mother no matter what you had told yourself in the dark, you opened your arms.

He came into them with a sound you would remember for the rest of your life.

You held him while he shook. Tsireya collided into both of you an instant later, wrapping herself around your side and pressing tear-wet kisses to your shoulder and jaw and temple as if trying to prove you were really there. You drew her in too. For a few breaths the three of you stood locked together, all pain and salt and forgiveness-not-yet-but-love-still.

When you finally lifted your head, Tonowari still had not moved.

You looked at him. “And you.”

His mouth almost twitched through the grief. “Yes.”

“You do not get to be the calm one and imagine that is enough. Your silence has teeth.”

Tonowari bowed his head once. “I know.”

“You should have stopped it long before now.”

“Yes.”

“You let me bear things alone because you thought surviving them meant I needed no shield.”

His eyes closed briefly.

You let him sit under that. Then, because he had owned it with the same painful honesty Ronal had and because love made monsters and mercies of all of you, you held out one hand.

Tonowari took it like a man accepting judgment.

When he stepped close, he did not pull you into him immediately. He only rested his forehead against yours and breathed. That hurt most of all. The restraint. The understanding that your anger still lived and had to be honored.

“I missed you” he whispered.

You shut your eyes. “Good.”

He laughed once against your skin, broken and relieved and miserable all at once. “Cruel woman.”

“Yes” you said.

That made Ronal huff a damp, half-laugh from where she had finally risen, and suddenly the impossible thing happened.

The pain remained.

So did the love.

They stood together and did not cancel each other out.

——————————————————————

You did not return to the marui that instant. You made them walk back with you slowly. You made them answer. Not every question. Not every hurt. But enough. Along the root-paths under moonlight you spoke of the clan’s whispers, of old wounds, of the ways love had not absolved them from confronting the ugliness around you. Ronal did not shy from hearing it. Tonowari did not hide behind leadership. Ao’nung spoke little after his apology, but every word he gave was honest. Tsireya stayed close enough to touch you every few breaths as if still making sure you would not vanish again.

By the time the family marui came into view, you were exhausted to the marrow.

The sight of home almost drove you back. Then Tsireya laced her fingers through yours and tugged very gently, and you let her.

Inside, nothing had changed and everything had. Your sleeping place remained as you had left it. Your things, the few you had grabbed, were not there because you still had them. Yet the air itself felt different. More careful. Less sure of itself. Good. Let it be.

Tsireya made you sit before you could decide not to. She brought water. Ao’nung, red-eyed and subdued, disappeared and returned with the wrap you had left behind days ago, folded more neatly than he had ever folded anything in his life. Ronal stood at the edge of the space as if uncertain whether approaching would wound more than soothe. Tonowari lit the low lamps and then simply remained near, visible, available, not pressing.

You looked at them and felt the ache all over again. You stood there for a long moment, looking at them all in the dim light of the marui.

Tsireya’s face was still wet with tears. Ao’nung looked wrecked by his own shame, all the sharpness gone out of him at last. Tonowari stood quiet and careful, as if one wrong movement might send you slipping away again. Ronal had not tried to come closer since your return, but her eyes had not left you once. The weight of everything still sat there between you, bruised and breathing, but it no longer felt like something that would swallow the whole family alive if no one spoke.

You let out a slow breath and looked away for a moment, gathering yourself.

“If I come back” you said at last, your voice tired but steady “then I will not return to silence. I will not come into this home and pretend nothing was said. I will not make myself smaller so the rest of you may feel more comfortable with what you have done.”

“No” Ronal said immediately, her voice low and rough. “You should not.”

Tonowari nodded once. “You will not have to.”

You looked at Ao’nung then, and some part of your chest still hurt too badly to soften fully, but there was room for something gentler now too.

“And you” you said quietly “will not hide from me when you are ashamed. You will face me. Do you understand?”

Ao’nung swallowed hard and nodded. “Yes, Mother.”

That word nearly undid you again.

The silence that followed was not easy, but it was no longer cruel either. It simply existed, full of exhaustion and the remains of tears and the fragile uncertainty of people who had broken one another open and were now being forced to learn how to touch the wound without making it worse. For the first time since you had left, the marui felt less like a battlefield and more like a place where healing might someday be possible.

Tsireya was the first to move.

She stepped toward you slowly, as though afraid you might still pull away, and when you opened one arm for her she came at once, folding herself against your side with a soft, shaking breath. You wrapped her close and kissed the top of her head. She clung to you without embarrassment, pressing her face into your shoulder the way she had as a child whenever the world felt too large or too sharp for her soft heart.

“I missed you” she whispered.

Your eyes closed. “I know, sweet girl.”

Ao’nung lingered only a moment longer before he came too, slower than his sister had, more uncertain, but no less in need of it. He did not throw himself at you. That was not his way. He only moved close enough that you could reach for him, and when you did, when your hand caught his arm and pulled him nearer, the tight control in him gave with almost frightening speed.

You drew both of your children in against you then, one on either side, and held them.

For a while none of you said anything. Tsireya’s breathing gradually evened under your hand. Ao’nung stood tense at first, then slowly let himself lean just a little into your side, no longer pretending he did not need the reassurance of your touch. You kept one arm around Tsireya and the other around him, your fingers stroking once down his back before settling there. The simple familiarity of it hurt and soothed in equal measure.

Across from you, Tonowari watched with something raw and grateful in his face. Ronal looked quieter than you had seen her in a long time, her expression stripped bare by remorse and love and relief she did not seem to know what to do with.

When the children finally eased back, you were left facing your mates.

For a heartbeat no one moved.

Then Tonowari crossed the small distance between you in that same careful way he had worn since you returned, broad body held back by restraint rather than confidence. His hand came up slowly, giving you every chance to refuse him, and rested against the side of your neck. Warm. Steady. Familiar enough that it made your throat tighten.

“You do not have to forgive everything tonight” he said softly. “You do not have to be whole tonight either. Just stay.”

The words were so simple that they lodged deeper than any grand speech could have. You looked at him, at the honesty in his face, at the grief he had made no attempt to hide from you, and nodded once.

“I can stay” you said.

Something in him eased then, not all at once, but enough. He bent and pressed his forehead gently to yours, saying nothing more, and in that silence you felt apology, relief, and love all tangled together. It was not enough to erase what had happened. It was enough to remind you why leaving had hurt like tearing out part of your own bones.

When Tonowari stepped back, Ronal still did not move immediately.

Her hands were clasped too tightly in front of her, a rare tell from someone usually so composed. At last she came toward you, slower even than Tonowari had, and stopped close enough that you could see how red her eyes still were.

“I do not know how to touch you tonight without fearing I have lost the right” she admitted.

Your anger stirred again at that, but more tiredly now than before. “Then do not decide for me.”

Ronal’s breath caught.

You reached for her first.

The look that crossed her face at that was almost painful to witness. She stepped into you as soon as your hands found her arms, and the moment she was close enough you pulled her the rest of the way in. Ronal held herself tightly for all of one second before breaking and wrapping both arms around you with a quiet, shaking exhale that seemed pulled from the bottom of her lungs. You held her through it, one hand at her back, the other slipping up into her braids.

“I am here.”

At that, Ronal made the smallest wounded sound and held you tighter.

The rest came more quietly after that.

No more shouting. No fresh wounds. Just the family settling around one another in the weary aftermath of too much pain finally spoken aloud. Tonowari brought water. Tsireya, still reluctant to let you out of reach, sat pressed close to your side while Ao’nung fetched the wrap you had taken when you left and set it beside you with lowered eyes. Ronal insisted, in the old familiar way that was half command and half care, that you sit before your legs gave out under you. This time, when she said it, a faint thread of warmth lived under the sternness again.

You sat.

Slowly, naturally, the others gathered around you. Tsireya curled in first, leaning against you with her head on your shoulder. Ao’nung sat near your knee, not touching at first, but close enough that the distance no longer felt like rejection. Tonowari settled at your other side, one arm stretched loosely behind you along the woven supports, near without crowding. Ronal remained in front of you for a few moments, as if still confirming to herself that you were real and staying, before finally kneeling close and resting one hand lightly over yours.

No one rushed to fill the quiet.

That was what made it kind.

The sea breathed beyond the marui walls. Night sounds moved through the village in soft layers. The lamps burned low, throwing warm light over tired faces and damp lashes and shoulders slowly unclenching after days of strain. At some point Tsireya’s eyes drifted shut, her breathing evening out where she rested against you. Not long after, Ao’nung shifted closer in tiny increments until his shoulder brushed against your leg. He did it as if hoping no one would notice.

You noticed.

You said nothing, only let your hand settle into his hair for a brief, gentle stroke. Ao’nung’s eyes closed for half a second at the touch before he ducked his head. That alone told you how deeply he still needed to feel he was forgiven, and how young he still was beneath all the pride.

Tonowari reached for one of the woven blankets and spread it over all of you with the same quiet efficiency he brought to every act of care. Ronal watched him do it, then leaned in and pressed a small kiss to your cheek, so soft it barely seemed to land. You turned just enough to let your forehead brush hers in answer, and the relief that moved through her was so visible it made your chest ache.

By the time the night deepened fully, the marui had gone still around you.

Tsireya was sleeping against your side. Ao’nung had not quite fallen asleep, but he sat drowsy and quiet near your knee, no longer fighting his own need for closeness. Tonowari’s hand rested warm and solid over your ankle beneath the blanket, a grounding touch more than anything else. Ronal remained tucked close enough that your shoulders brushed, her presence careful now in a way it had not been before, as though she had finally understood how precious your trust truly was.

You looked at them and felt the ache still there.

Not gone. Not erased. Still bruised, still tender, still real.

But underneath it, and around it, something softer had returned too. Something stubborn. Something home-shaped.

Your family had hurt you. They had failed you. They would have to live with that and do better, and you would make certain they did. But they were still yours, and you were still theirs, and tonight that truth was no longer a weapon in anyone’s mouth. It was only a promise resting quietly in the dim light, wrapped in warm bodies and salt air and tired love.

They’re both so tall and beautiful, the perfect picture of a united front working together for the good of their people. With the classic azure skin and big blue eyes that are so characteristic of the Metkayina, they’re almost supernaturally attractive. Even though they’re looking at you because they are suspicious, their close regard makes you feel hot and itchy underneath your skin. It might be easier to be watched by them if they weren’t so goddamned attractive.

For the most part, you stay out of their way as best you can. Your presence amongst the clan is disruptive enough – you figure the best thing to do is keep a low profile. 

For the most part, that works just fine. You keep close to the Sullys when you can, The whole reason you’re staying in the village in the first place is so you can keep an eye on Kiri, and that involves living among the Sullys in their marui pod. It can be a little uncomfortable, at times – you are the only human, and it can lead to you feeling terribly out of place living with them, especially since you know Neytiri is not particularly pleased with your presence. Despite this, sometimes you find that the clan leaders watch you just as closely when you’re around Jake and Neytiri as they do when you’re alone.

The Sully kids, at least, don’t mind your presence in the slightest. They take to dragging you around the place, which keeps you occupied. Tuk especially seems to relish hanging around you; perhaps it’s because you’re roughly the same size, despite the age difference.

She drags you swimming with her, laughing joyously as she splashes around and explores the reefs along the village. You follow her contently, relying pretty heavily on your exo-mask in the water as you go diving or sitting on the wooden pier leading out into the water.

“Watch me dive, watch me dive!” Tuk cheers, showing off her form as she goes running off the platform and leaps.

It’s not particularly graceful, and she hits the water with a splash that has you wincing from where you’re sitting just outside the Sully marui pod. Still though, when she resurfaces you make sure to clap and smile in approval. 

“Wow!” You call, grinning. “So impressive, Tuk!”

Your legs are dangling into the water from the edge of the marui pod, and you feel your skin beginning to warm and dry beneath the sun. You have no proper swimming attire and the clothes of the Na’vi are too big for you, so you’ve taken to swimming in your cotton underwear and old bra. They’re pale purple and covered in delicate little white flowers, and you might be embarrassed about it if the Na’vi weren’t so comfortable with their own bodies. You know they really don’t give a shit about what you wear.

Tuk is grinning, swimming back closer to you with her ears flicking in delight at your praise. “Do you wanna see me do it again?”

“Oh, I would just love to.” You say, lips twitching. 

Out of the corner of your eye you can see Kiri floating on her back in the water, her eyes closed and head tilted back towards the sky. She has been quiet since her episode, though you are pleased to see that she looks much brighter and healthier than before. 

Tuk has just started to wiggle her way out of the water in order to jump in again when a shadow falls across you from behind. Startled, you raise your head. 

Behind you stands the tall, broad form of the Metkayina clan leader. Tonowari cuts an intimidating figure, with his broad shoulders and many tattoos and his neutral, even expression. His ears are lowered and his jaw is clenched, and he stares at you with those bottomless blue eyes in such a way that your heart is sent galloping wildly in your chest. 

“Oh!” You choke, startled by his presence. “I- Hello!”

Your grasp on the Na’vi language is pretty good, but your accent sounds thick and clumsy thanks to your nerves. Tonowari tilts his head, watching you closely. The Metkayina are built differently to the Omaticaya; this close, you can really admire the broadness of his shoulders, his strong chest, and his huge biceps. 

It takes a moment for you to realise that he’s watching you right back. It appears his focus is on your clothing, however. His brow is slightly furrowed as his eyes trail over your cotton bra and somewhat skimpy underpants. They’re still damp from the water, clinging to you in a way that has turned them slightly transparent. They’re not nearly as revealing as some of the Na’vi coverings, and yet you feel embarrassingly exposed all the same.

You shift, and try to bring your arms up across your chest in a way that is casual. When Tonowari doesn’t immediately respond, you decide to try again.

“Um… are you looking for Jake?”

That finally gets a response from him. He takes a step forward, and you try not to flinch as he lowers himself down to one knee in front of you. You have never been this close to him before, and it feels as though his gaze is burning a hole in you.

“Yes,” He says, and his voice is so low and rough that it sends a shiver down your spine. “I am looking for Jakesully.”

“He-” Oh god, your voice is cracking. How mortifying. You clear your throat hastily. “He is out on his ilu, with Neytiri.”

Tonowari dips his head in acknowledgement. You notice his eyes straying towards your chest again, and you feel yourself grow warm under his gaze. Does he even realise what he’s doing? He must find your human form and clothes completely bizarre. You try not to shrink under his stare.

“I see,” He says, and his eyes dart away from you towards the water, where Tuk is now floating around Kiri. “You have been left alone with the children?”

That rankles a little, despite your efforts to remain calm. You know that both he and Ronal have been eyeing you mistrustfully from the start, but you resent the implication that you are not trustworthy enough to have around the kids.

“I care for them.” You say, and your tone is a little sharper than you had intended. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to them.”

His ears lower, and you wonder if you have upset him. 

“You are small.” He points out. “You are not likely to be able to stop anything from happening even if you wanted to.”

Ouch. That one hurt.

You straighten your shoulders, before clambering your way up to your feet. Slowly, Tonowari mirrors you and stands as well. Even at your full height, you barely reach his navel. It’s a fight to keep your expression neutral when faced with the sheer size of him.

“Well,” You say a little stiffly, momentarily distracted by the sunlight reflecting off the glass beads that dangle around his chest. “Jake and Neytiri trust me. I’m enough for them.”

Tonowari raises his chin at that, his mouth turning down as his ears pin back. He doesn’t appear pleased with that statement at all, staring down at you with his lips pressed tightly together. You feel pinned under his gaze, and try not to shift around anxiously.

It’s Kiri’s voice that breaks the tension between you.

“Dad will be back soon,” She calls from the water. When you turn to look at her, you can see the way her eyes dart between you and the Olo’eyktan. “We can tell him to go and see you as soon as gets home.”

For a long moment, Tonowari says nothing. He just keeps looking at you. It’s a little overwhelming, and you find yourself struggling to maintain eye contact. Eventually though, he gives a little rumble deep in his chest and steps back.

“Yes.” He says, his voice a little louder now. “Tell him.”

You nod cautiously, and he nods once in return before turning on his heel and striding away. You’re left standing on the bouncy floor of the net bridge that connects the Sully marui to the rest of the village, wondering just what on earth all that was about.

You can’t help but wonder if you’ve done something to offend the chief’s family. After that one little interaction with Tonowari outside of the marui, it seems like his and Ronal’s staring is upped a notch.

Now, it’s like you can’t leave the marui at all without being under some sort of surveillance. You can feel their intense stares from all the way across the village. While Tonowari’s stares are rather obvious, Ronal’s gaze is more subtle. She watches you from beneath her dark lashes, casting looks in your direction anytime you’re wandering the beaches or following after the Sully’s in the village. 

The tsa’hik even watches you when she comes to visit the Sully marui to check on Kiri. It would be easy to miss the way her eyes slide over to you after she examines Kiri, but you are beginning to grow familiar with being watched. It feels like a weight settling over your skin, and you fight not to fidget as you help Neytiri cut up fruit.

“She is doing well.” Ronal says, a little stiffly. “She is strong.”

The relationship between her and Neytiri is still a little strained, but they have established something of an understanding. 

Neytiri nods, her ears flicked back in gratitude. “I thank you for your help. Will you stay for food?”

Oh god, please say no, you think in a panic. You don’t know how you would cope sitting in such close quarters with her for so long, especially not if she keeps looking at you like she has been. Her regard is intimidating, but it also makes you feel clumsy and stupid. She’s probably one of the most beautiful women you’ve ever seen, and having her stare at you like that is driving you a little crazy.

“No,” Ronal says, much to your relief. “But I have brought you summauti.”

She proffers a basket of fruit, and Neytiri’s expression softens a little in acknowledgement of the gesture. She takes it, and maintains careful eye contact as she nods.

Ronal’s head turns then so that she is staring at you head-on. It is the first time that she has looked at you properly, not just out of the corner of her eye, and you find yourself startled by the intensity of it. 

“Does the sky demon eat with you?” She asks.

You try not to shrink under her gaze, and instead tilt your head up to meet her stare. To the side, you can see Neytiri beginning to frown, glancing between the two of you in clear confusion.

“Yes,” says Neytiri. Though you know she is not pleased with your presence among her family, her shoulders square and she sounds defensive. “She watches over Kiri.”

One of Ronal’s ears twitches, as though that’s not the answer she was hoping for. Still though, she appears to lose interest in both you and the conversation. She just clicks her tongue, before stepping back out through the marui pod and disappearing without another word.

In the ensuing silence, Neytiri turns to you with an almost comically bemused and suspicious expression.

“What was that?” She demands, eyes narrowed.

You’re still watching the entrance to the marui, the fabric of the tent flapping slightly from where Ronal had pushed it aside on her way out.

“I have no idea.” You answer honestly, completely bewildered.

The Sully kids settle into Metkayina life slowly, but steadily. They are learning well, adjusting steadily, and they begin to grow happier and more comfortable with their surroundings. It is heartening to see, especially since they’re such sweet kids. 

It’s all going so well. Perhaps it’s inevitable that a wrench is thrown into the gears at some point. 

The wrench comes in the form of Lo’ak and Ao’nung arguing, once again. It’s not unusual, and it’s certainly not the first time that it escalates into shoving each other. The problem comes when you decide to try and step in and try to keep them apart.

God, what a stupid thing to do. They’re both bigger than you, and they don’t even really see you as you shout at them to stop. It’s Ao’nung that ends up knocking into you, though it’s not really his fault – it’s his tail that gets you, long and wide like a fin. It smacks into your side and knocks you back into the ground.

You hit the sand with a slap, your head knocking into the ground and sending stars blooming across the back of your eyelids. There’s a sharp burst of pain in your shoulder, and you wince as you reach to grab your arm.

It’s painful and embarrassing, but at the very least it ends their argument pretty quickly. Lo’ak yells louder, calls Ao’nung an asshole, but then crouches by your side quickly to check that you’re alright.

Ao’nung has paused, and watches Lo’ak kneel down beside you to check you over with an odd expression on his face. You’d like to think it’s guilt, but you really don’t think he cares that much.

“You could have seriously hurt her!” Lo’ak snarls, his lips peeling back off his teeth. “She is not like us, her bones break easily!”

“Stop that,” You snap, irritated by all the arguing. “That’s enough.”

Ao’nung’s tail is coiled between his legs, his big blue eyes watching you with an odd sort of heaviness. “I will take you to my mother.”

Well, that damn near knocks the breath out of you all over again. 

“What?” You practically yelp, taking Lo’ak’s hand as he hauls you to your feet. “No, no, I don’t think-”

“You are bleeding.” Ao’nung interrupts, reaching out to point towards the arm you had landed on.

You follow his gaze, only to find a tiny scratch on your forearm. You must have landed on a sharp little stone or something. Though it’s oozing a little blood, there’s no pain at all.

“What?” You say again, distracted and a little bewildered. “No, that’s nothing. It’s a little scratch, I don’t need-”

“Oh man,” Lo’ak interrupts, his own brow furrowing. “Fuck, you’re bleeding. Should I get dad?”

“Stop being so ridiculous!” You hiss at both of them, covering the little scratch with your hand. You know that the two of them have gotten worse scratches in their training, nevermind the injuries they’ve given each other. Their overreactions would almost be comical, if it weren’t so embarrassing.

“My mother will wish to see to you,” Ao’nung continues to insist, frowning. “Especially since I was the cause of this.”

The contrition is odd, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to take no for an answer, especially as he reaches out to grab you by the arm. His grip is strong and rough, and you yelp as he tugs your shoulder painfully in its socket.

He whips his hand away from you immediately, clearly startled by your noise of pain. Lo’ak leaps forward to push at him again.

“I told you she’s easy to break!” Lo’ak snaps.

To your surprise, Ao’nung does not argue back. He just glares at Lo’ak, before looking back at you. Instead of grabbing at you again, he settles for attempting to herd you back towards the village using his outstretched arms like you’re an animal.

It becomes clear that you don’t have much of a choice pretty quickly. Lo’ak soon joins in with trying to herd you towards the tsa’hik’s marui. You have no idea what’s going on but when you try to dig your heels into the sand, Lo’ak loops his arm around yours and pulls you on. 

“It’s just a scratch, it’s hardly even bleeding!” You hiss as you get closer and closer to the marui, your nerves flaring as you realise that you’re going to be presented in front of Ronal in a matter of moments.

It’s Ao’nung that answers; his ears are low and his tail is curled between his legs. “We were told not to fight. If my mother finds out later that I disobeyed and also drew blood…”

He trails off, though his meaning is clear. You find yourself confused. They have drawn more blood than the measly scratch on your arm in their past scuffles, so you can’t imagine why they are so contrite about this now. Does he mean that he shouldn’t have drawn your blood? Lo’ak’s concern isn’t entirely surprising, but Ao’nung? You don’t even know the kid, but you can tell that he’s not sold on the idea of having a human around the clan. You getting a tiny little scratch shouldn’t phase him in the slightest.

When Ao’nung marches you to the marui, you shrink into yourself a little. 

Ronal is sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bowl of coral, and she’s crushing it down into a fine powder. When Ao’nung pulls aside the fabric covering the entrance of the marui and steps in, her head snaps up to look at him.

“Mother,” He says carefully, before reaching behind him to draw you forward. “The sky demon was hurt.”

The speed with which Ronal stands is startling, especially considering her swollen belly. You try not to flinch back too obviously.

“What happened?” She asks tightly, her nostrils flaring. 

Oh man. Ao’nung is braver than you are, because if you were on the receiving end of that sharp glare you think you would crumble to dust. As it is, Ao’nung just ducks his head repentantly. 

“I knocked her over. It was an accident.” He mumbles, his ears flat.

“Accident.” Ronal hisses at him, furious. “You were warned-”

“I am sorry.” Ao’nung winces.

Despite yourself, you actually feel sorry for the kid. You were a teenaged idiot yourself once, and it really was an accident on his part. You shouldn’t have inserted yourself into their stupid bickering the way you did.

“It’s not really his fault.” You manage not to quail under Ronal’s gaze when she turns to look at you. “I was underfoot.”

That doesn’t seem to appease her very much, and she just bares her teeth at Ao’nung and Lo’ak once more. “Your father will deal with you later. Out.”

The boys don’t wait to be told twice. They turn on their heels and flee the hut, leaving you alone and nervous as Ronal approaches.

Good lord, she’s tall. As she bends down on one knee to look at you, you start to sweat. Shit, she’s probably the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen in your life. Her elegant features and enormous round eyes are sharpened by the dark tattoos that decorate her face like rippling waves, her face framed by a cloud of soft dark hair. In the privacy of her own home, she is wearing a woven top that is significantly more simple than her usual decorative clothing, and it does almost nothing to cover her breasts. You struggle not to look, cheeks burning.

“Show me.” She demands, her voice husky with aggravation.

You stick your arm out immediately – you value your life far too much to argue with her right now. She reaches out and closes her thick four fingers around your wrist, pulling you a step closer so she can peer at the damage. Honestly, the cut is so minor that you’re embarrassed to even be wasting her time with it.

“It’s really nothing-” You begin, but she doesn’t appear interested in listening to your protests.

“I have a paste that will fix this.” She says instead, pushing herself to her feet.

You’re expecting her to move towards the table further into the marui where there are bowls of pastes and herbal medicines lined up in neat little rows, but her next move takes you entirely by surprise. 

She tucks her hands beneath your arms and picks you right up as if you weigh nothing. Even when you yelp in shock, she hardly looks at you at all. Fuck, she’s lifting you so easily that it sends an electric little jolt right down your spine.

With you dangling in the air like an idiot, Ronal steps over to one of the large woven chairs and sits down in it. Bizarrely, you end up sitting on her lap like a fucking child.

You’re frozen, staring up at her with wide eyes. You can’t figure out why on earth she would have put you in this position – how the fuck is this conducive to healing?

She must notice the look on your face, because her brow raises and her ear flicks. 

“You are too small.” She points out. “You think I should stay on my knees hunched over just to treat you?”

“No.” You say hastily, still flushed and embarrassed. 

Oh god, okay. It’s just so she can reach you. That makes this okay, doesn’t it? There’s nothing weird about this. You’re just… You’re just straddling one of her wide thighs so that she can reach your arm, that’s all. Maybe you’re the one that’s making this weird just by getting awkward about it?

You have to fight not to squirm as Ronal dabs a cooling clay-like paste over the abrasion on your arm. It soothes the light sting, but you hardly notice. Your attention has narrowed down to the point of contact between you and Ronal; you’re still wearing the thin underwear you had been swimming in earlier, which means that you feel mortifyingly bare and exposed where you straddle her single thigh.

When she grips at your bicep, you wince. You’re pretty sure your shoulder is bruising, and Ronal’s little grimace confirms your suspicion.

“You were watching the children when my son knocked you down?” Ronal asks, her voice low.

“Uh.. yes.” You say a little awkwardly. “Kiri, mainly. That’s why I’m here. I’ve got first aid training, so if she has another seizure I might be able to help. Not that you can’t help too of course! I, um, I know that you’re quite skilled-”

Oh god, you’re babbling. The only thing that saves you from total humiliation is the fact that Ronal nods at what you say. Her face is settled into grim neutrality but she seems satisfied with your compliment to her skills.

You can’t help but glance down. The Metkayina are built differently to the Omaticaya – their lower legs and arms are wider, the tails larger, their upper bodies stronger. Their thighs are a little wider than that of the Omaticaya as well, and you glance at where your own legs are sprawled awkwardly around her upper leg, your skintone contrasting oddly with the ripple-like blue stripes across her skin.

When your eyes fall on her stomach, you swallow. You’re so stupid – she has a mate, she has a whole family. You are almost certainly reading too much into this whole thing. You need to get yourself under control.

You clear your throat. “Will your baby be here soon?”

Ronal doesn’t look at you, but hums quietly beneath her breath. “A few more months to go.”

Ah. You had thought that she was closer to the end than that. You try to shift your weight, before realising that there’s no way of adjusting yourself without rubbing yourself awkwardly against her. You don’t want her to get the wrong idea, so you go still.

After a beat, she looks at you from beneath the fan of her dark lashes. “I am big now. It makes moving difficult, sometimes.”

You seize on the opportunity for regular conversation with both hands. Now that you’re this close to her, she hasn’t sent a single glare in your direction. Her gaze is as watchful and intense as ever, but it doesn’t seem to be fuelled by hostility. You’re determined to keep on good terms with her, so you smile as brightly as you can through your mask.

“I can imagine,” You say quickly, relieved with how well this entire interaction is going. “If you’d like, I can help out! I can… I can collect herbs, or gather coral, or whatever you want.”

You don’t think you’re imagining the way the corner of her mouth twitches, but it’s such a small movement that you nearly miss it entirely. She’s still looking at you through half-lidded eyes. This close, her stare doesn’t seem hateful or distrustful at all. It’s enough to have you growing warm and embarrassed where you’re sitting on her thigh.

“It is not just movement,” She says, and her tone has turned very casual. “I am too large now to comfortably be intimate with my mate in the way I would like to be.”

You freeze. That is absolutely not what you were expecting.

“Oh.” You say. It sounds as though you’re being strangled.

“Tonowari takes care of me and my needs, of course. He is a generous mate.” Ronal continues, as though this is a perfectly normal conversation to be having with someone she considers a demon who is currently splayed across her lap. “But sometimes I miss getting fucked properly, like before he put the baby in me.”

It feels a little as though you’ve just been clubbed over the head. Had Ao’nung hit you harder than you realised? Are you absolutely losing your mind right now? There’s no way the woman who has been watching you with a narrow-eyed glare ever since you got here is talking to you so casually.

She looks up from your arm, eyes piercing. “You understand what I mean, don’t you?”

“What?” You breathe, lost.

“You are lonely here, no?” Ronal asks. She has no mercy; it doesn’t matter that you’re obviously confused. “When was the last time that someone touched you? Was intimate with you?”

There must be some translation issue going on here. Maybe your grasp on Na’vi wasn't as good as you thought it was. Or maybe you’re just imagining the undertones that seem to be going on here. Still though, while this is bewilderingly out of your comfort zone, you attempt to match her casual tone.

“I-” You swallow thickly. “A while.”

Ronal hums again. Your arm has long since been treated, but she has not yet let go of you. She is too busy watching you as though she can read every thought in your head from your face. You wonder if she can tell how flustered you are – it must be obvious. Oh god, does this mean that she’s noticed the way you’ve been looking at her and her husband? Noticed the way you’ve been admiring them? You thought you were being subtle.

“Jakesully does not touch you?” She asks suddenly. “Neytiri does not touch you?”

You nearly choke. “No! No, I just- I’m staying with them to help out, that’s all.”

Something in her face changes at that. It’s subtle enough that you nearly don’t notice, but upon closer look you see that she looks pleased.

“You must be frustrated.” She says lightly. 

 You feel more aware than ever of your position. You’re wearing nothing but your still-damp underwear, straddling the thigh of the large, beautiful woman who is now asking you whether or not you are sexually frustrated. Surely you can’t be imagining this? This can’t possibly be an ambiguous situation.

You should probably be cautious with your answer. You’re in a precarious position as a human within the clan, and you should really think carefully about your answer here. The last thing you need is to cause a diplomatic incident by accidentally offending the Olo’eyktan’s family. But as it stands, you’re feeling reckless and stupid and yes, a little frustrated.

“Yes.” You breathe. “Kind of.”

Ronal begins to smile for real then. It’s not a soft smile; her lips pull back from her sharp teeth in a way that is honestly very intimidating, and her hands come down to land on your hips.

“How long?” She asks, leaning forward to murmur against your ear. “How long have you gone without relief?”

You shudder a little as her breath ghosts over the sensitive skin of your throat. It feels like you’re going crazy. 

When you don’t answer, she clicks her tongue impatiently. “A few weeks? Months? Years?”

“Over a year.” You say shakily.

 It’s not like you didn’t have options – the outpost for humans living among the Na’vi were full of people looking to get busy with each other, but there was no one that really caught your eye and the old vibrator you kept locked in a chest under your bunk did the job just fine. Or at least, you thought it had. Judging by the growing sense of yearning in your lower belly, you’re beginning to suspect you’re more touch-starved than you realised.

Ronal makes a soft noise, her wide hands flexing and tightening around your hips. “Poor thing. So neglected.”

Her next move surprises you so much you nearly jolt right off her lap. She uses her hold on your hips to pull you further up on her thigh. You slide along her taut skin, your clothed pussy grinding against the corded muscle.

You squeak, throwing your hands up to grab onto her shoulders. When she does it again, a shudder tears its way through your spine. Heat is building fast in the juncture between your legs, and your hips jut forward along her outstretched thigh as she encourages you to rock against her.

She keeps pulling you to rock your hips with one hand as she raises her other hand to tug at your bra.

 “Remove this. I wish to see you.” She orders.

You scramble to reach the clasp behind you immediately. Maybe you should think this through a little bit more, but you’re horny and desperate and running on pure instinct right now. You tear your bra off and throw it to the side, taking a breath as Ronal’s hand runs across your bared breasts.

“Oh god,” You breathe, clutching at her shoulders as she encourages you to rock against her thigh. 

Sweat is beginning to build around your brow as your panties grow almost uncomfortably sticky. You’re certain she can feel how slick you are even through the cotton of your underwear, but she doesn’t seem to mind. 

In fact, it seems to delight her. When the hand on your hip slips from your waist down lower, her thumb comes to rest against your clit through the soft cotton of your panties. You let out a breathy moan of surprise, your nails digging a little into her shoulders as you clutch her for leverage.

“They have not been taking care of you,” Ronal says, right as her fingers dip inside your underwear. 

When she rubs a careful circle around your clit you whine, desperate for some relief. She runs her fingers experimentally along your slit. You’re so damn horny that even the slightest touch has you rutting your hips forward into her hand, desperate for her to touch you more, harder.

“Who?” You ask hazily. Your thoughts feel clouded and stupid – her fingers are big, and your head spins when her thick index finger begins to press inside you.

“Jakesully. Neytiri. The forest people.” She rumbles, her ears twitching as you clench around her finger. “You are so wet. You have been wanting this, yes?”

“Yes, but-” You gasp when another one of her fingers enter you, the stretch stinging for a moment before easing into warm pleasure. “Jake and Neytiri have been taking care of me. They just would never- they are mated.”

Ronal snorts a soft chuckle, her fingers curling lazily inside you as you shiver against her. “So? It is not unusual for a mated pair to court another.”

That is news to you. You know little about Na’vi mating practices; polyamory had never crossed your mind.

“What did you think was happening?” She murmurs, fingers twisting. You jerk against her chest, and she huffs another soft snort of a laugh. “You have watched over our children. You accepted the offerings of fruit that I brought. When we watch you, you watch us right back.”

Those sound like pretty normal things to you, but she says them with such weight that you realise pretty quickly that there’s some meaning behind those things that you’ve missed at some point.

There’s a soft scuffling sound at the entrance of the marui pod, and you feel yourself jolt back to the present. Ronal’s hands on you remain steady and firm, which means you can’t move too much, but you still manage to twist round to see who just entered and- oh fuck.

It’s Tonowari. 

He stands in the entrance of the pod, his eyes flared wide in obvious surprise and his lips pressed firmly together. You jolt on Ronal’s lap, mortified. Oh shit – he’s just walked in on you in a rather compromising position with his wife. 

Fuck, her fingers are still inside of you, and you’re pretty sure you’re dripping all over her hand. Is he angry? Is he going to kill you?

“Ronal,” He rumbles, taking a slow step further into the pod. “We said we would take this slow.”

“She is so eager to help.” His wife says, before turning to look at you with those pretty big blue eyes. “Aren’t you?”

“I-” You choke, looking back and forth between them. What the fuck is even happening?

“She says Jakesully and his mate do not touch her,” Ronal says, her voice low and husky and rumbling in her own chest – it reverberates down through her body which in turn has you clenching tighter around her fingers. “Look at how desperate she is, my love. You would deny her this?”

Tonowari’s deep blue eyes drift over your exposed chest and belly, and down to where his wife’s hand is stuffed down your cotton panties as you straddle her leg. You’re sure it makes quite the sight – you can see the way his gaze lingers around your thighs, where they’re quivering around Ronal’s. He takes another step forward, then another.

“Come and touch.” Ronal encourages him when he gets close enough, her gaze dark and lidded. “She is soft. Softer than you would believe.”

Tonowari reaches out immediately, as though he’s a slave to his wife’s commands. His hand lands across your chest, splayed out over your sternum, and you shudder at the sheer size of it. Fuck, it spans from shoulder to shoulder and down to your tits. It should probably put you off, or at least freak you out a little, but instead you’re sure that Ronal can feel you squeezing around her hand.

He leans down so that his chest is plastered against your back, the heat of him searing against your bare skin. He’s huge, his large hand keeping you tucked carefully against the bulk of his torso as he leans in to murmur to you.

“You want this?” He asks, his breath ghosting against the shell of your ear. 

Ronal’s thumb rolls over your clit and your hips jerk, pleasure throbbing up your spine as you take a shaky breath behind your exo-mask.

“Yes.” The word practically comes out on a sob.

You can feel him grin against your throat, and then a big beefy arm is looping around your waist and you let out a startled little sound as you’re hauled into the air again. Just like before, a surprising little shock of arousal shoots through you. They manhandle you so easily, it’s difficult not to get affected by it. 

As he holds you against his chest, your legs dangling mid-air, Ronal rises from the chair she was sitting in and tugs your panties off you entirely. She tosses them carelessly to the side before taking the opportunity to assess your naked body as it’s held tight to her husband’s. She must approve, because she shoots a sharp smile over your shoulder towards Tonowari.

When Tonowari’s hand reaches down to cup your pussy, you make an odd strangled noise in your throat. Fuck, his hand is even bigger than Ronal’s – it encompasses your pussy entirely, his thick fingers rubbing curiously at the dampness that has collected between your thighs. He lets out a little rumble of surprise, the sound vibrating into your back.

“You are so wet.” He says, one of his big fingers pressing inside of you just like Ronal’s had only moments ago.

His wife makes a quiet sound of amusement, before reaching to remove her own woven chest covering and small loincloth. As distracted as you are by Tonowari’s touch, you can’t help but gape at her revealed breasts and cunt, shiny with what is unmistakably slick from her own arousal. For some reason, it takes seeing the physical signs of Ronal’s arousal for you to realise that this is real, this is actually happening. 

Ronal steps forward, and takes your chin between her thumb and index finger, holding your face firmly so that you’re looking right into her ocean-coloured eyes.

“Tonowari will fuck you,” She says, and you have to fight with everything you have not to moan at the words alone. “Like I said, he is a generous mate. We will make sure you are cared for.”

“Oh, fuck.” You say, like an absolute moron.

Ronal just grins, sharp-toothed and a little bit vicious, before sinking down to the floor. Tonowari follows her as if it’s some unspoken signal. Ronal lays back, her body reclined across the pretty woven rug that covers the spongey, bouncy floor of the marui. When her legs spread, your eyes are drawn to her pussy, blue and glistening between her thighs. You’ve never seen Na’vi anatomy up close and personal like this, and you find yourself cursing your need to breathe through your exo-mask with everything you have. You think you’d give anything to get your mouth on her right now – you’d bet she tastes just like the ocean.

Tonowari settles on the floor in front of her, then pushes you gently onto your hands and knees right in the middle of them. You’re trapped between Ronal’s legs, and you look up at her with wide eyes as Tonowari shifts behind you. She’s watching everything so closely, her eyes following her husband’s every move as he pulls your hips up, causing you back to arch as you’re forced to your elbows.

It takes a moment for you to realise that Tonowari is waiting for Ronal’s guidance, and you look up at her pleadingly. You don’t even know what you want, but you know that if someone doesn’t touch you somehow, you’re going to self-combust.

Under her stern veneer, you can see what is unmistakably amusement lurking in her pretty eyes. She nods at Tonowari; it must be some sort of signal that you don’t understand, because the next thing you know there’s an overwhelming, searing wet heat being pressed up against your cunt.

You almost squeal in shock, and it takes an embarrassingly long moment for you to realise that it’s Tonowari’s mouth that’s been pressed against you.

Truthfully, there’s a pretty big chunk of your brain that can’t believe this is happening. You’re on your elbows and knees with your ass in the air as the chief of the clan kneels behind you and suctions his mouth to your cunt, right there in the cradle of his pregnant wife’s thighs. You wonder if you’ve just lost your mind and are maybe hallucinating. They’re two of the hottest people you’ve ever seen in your life, and you’ve somehow ended up in an alien threesome with them? You don’t even know how this could have happened.

When his tongue starts to prod at your clit, your whole body jerks in surprise. His tongue is rougher than you had expected, textured like a cat’s, and it feels startlingly good as it rasps over your clit. Your hips twitch and chase after his touch, but he keeps you firmly in place with his grip on your hipbones.

“Oh god.” You whimper, head swimming. Without even really knowing what you’re asking for, you whisper, “Please.”

Ronal has reached a hand down to toy with herself, and she watches your expressions eagerly. Occasionally she will look back at Tonowari, as if she’s assessing his performance.

“Suck on her.” Ronal intones. She sounds perfectly neutral – if you couldn’t see the slick coating her fingers as she rubs at herself, you might think she was entirely unaffected by this whole thing.

Tonowari takes direction like an absolute champion, which isn’t something you expected from the Olo’eyktan. On his wife’s orders, he licks and sucks at your clit so eagerly that your back bows and you let out a genuine, overwhelmed sob. Your hips twitch away from him and then back into his mouth by turns, unsure of what you actually want. It’s overwhelming, but it feels impossibly good.

You’re already so keyed up from your earlier grinding on Ronal’s thigh and then her subsequent fingering, so it’s not a surprise at all to feel that familiar coil of heat beginning to build in your lower belly. Maybe it’s down to the situation, but you swear it’s building faster than any orgasm you’ve ever had.

Tonowari’s big, flat tongue rasps over your clit once more, and the coil snaps. You whine pathetically, gasping as your hips hump back against his face as you come, burying your face into your arms. Ronal isn’t having any of that though, and you feel her fingers wind into your hair before she pulls your head right back up – it seems she just wants to watch your face slacken and jaw hang open stupidly as you’re rocked by your orgasm.

As soon as Tonowari realises that you’re coming, his tongue begins to move faster. He laps frantically at you, drawing your orgasm out until you’re gasping and swearing and twitching against his face. 

You’ve practically gone cross-eyed by the time your orgasm has shuddered its way through you, and Ronal begins to pet at the side of your head. 

“Good,” She says, humming in approval. “You are relaxed?”

“Yes.” You mumble, but it comes out winded and stupid-sounding.

Ronal nods, clearly pleased. “You are ready for him, then.”

Yes, you think, toes curling in anticipation. Oh god, yes. You’re definitely ready for him – you’re so horny, and you don’t think you’ve ever felt so desperately empty in your whole life. You’re clenching around nothing right now; the thought of having someone fill you up sends a tingle of anticipation racing through you.

You’re still a little spaced out right now after your first orgasm, so you don’t notice when Ronal disappears for just a moment only to reappear with a little wooden jar filled with something. It’s only when you feel liquid being dribbled over your pussy that you raise your head, squinting.

“It’s oil,” Tonowari says from behind you. “To help with the stretch.”

It’s the first thing he’s said in a while, and his voice is rough and husky and makes your toes curl. God, he sounds so good. Is he breathless from eating you out, or is it from the anticipation of what’s to come? You wish you could see him properly, but being spread out with your ass in the air for him is a pretty exciting position, too.

Ronal repositions herself in front of you once more. It seems like she’s trying to get the best angle for watching, and she ends up pulling you a little bit further up so that you’re leaning against one of her thighs for support. 

The tip of Tonowari’s cock presses against you, far slicker than you had expected, and you feel your mouth drop open. Shit. You can’t see it, but it feels fucking huge. You had known on some level that it would be, of course. Tonowari himself is enormous, it only makes sense that his cock is proportional.

Your eyes flick up to Ronal’s, a little panicked. “Will it fit?”

She grins; an intimidating baring of her sharp teeth. “Yes, little thing. It will fit.”

Tonowari starts to press in, and your brain blanks out at the sensation of the slow, wet slide of him stretching you open.

“Okay, okay, okay.” You chant, breathing heavily. 

The pressure of the stretch is intense, stinging a little despite the copious oil and fingering. He takes it slow, rocking into you in little increments as you clutch onto Ronal’s thigh like your life depends on it. She just hums, watching with avid interest as your mouth falls open and your eyes widen with every little twitch of Tonowari’s hips.

You’ve never been stretched so full before, and he’s not even fully seated inside you yet. You wonder if you’ll feel the ache of this for the rest of your life.

With one last little rock, Tonowari is seated as far inside you as he’s going to go. You have no idea if he’s all the way in, but you swear that you’re drooling inside your exo-mask as you struggle to take what you’re given. 

Tonowari grunts. You’re sure that you’re squeezing him like a vice, despite all the stretching they’ve done, and his big hands flex where they’re holding your hips. You can practically feel the effort he’s currently exerting to restrain himself, to wait until you adjust to his girth.

“How does she feel?” Ronal wonders. Your face is buried in the softness of her thigh, and when you roll your head to the side you’re greeted with the sight of her rolling her clit between her fingers as she bites her lip.

The sight causes your pussy to flutter a little, and Tonowari swears softly as he drops his head down to rest across your shoulder.

“Tight.” He grits out, an odd sort of noise torn out of his chest right alongside the word. It takes a moment for you to realise that it’s an odd sort of purring.

“Fuck!” You cry out, his rumbling vibrating right through your body. 

You’re shuddering around him, your hands flailing desperately around – you don’t know what you’re even looking for, whether it’s stability or comfort that you’re looking for, but you end up finding both. One of your hands is clasped by Tonowari’s enormous paw of a hand, pinning it against the floor (while being so careful not to crush you) as he hunches over you, and your other hand is taken by Ronal’s and held tight by her leg as she rubs at herself with her free hand.

"Breathe, sweet little thing." Tonowari rumbles in your ear.His voice is low and raspy, which makes you tighten up around him mindlessly. The bastard sounds amused. "You're taking it so well."

It takes more effort than you might think to follow that order. Your breath comes in shuddering gasps inside your exo-mask, sticking in your chest everytime he pulls out, dragging along the slick flesh inside you and setting your nerves alight as he presses inside of you inch by excruciating inch.

“Careful.” Ronal bites out, squeezing lightly at the hand she’s holding against thigh as she touches herself.

Tonowari just groans in acknowledgement as he humps into the slippery heat of your pussy. “Talk to me, little one,” He grunts into your ear, pulling you back against him. “Let me hear you.”

“I’m good,” You wheeze, burying your face into Ronal’s thigh. “I’m so good.”

That makes him laugh, throaty and deep as it rumbles against your back. He leans forward so that the entire long line of his torso is pressed against your sweaty naked back, the sheer size of him absolutely dwarfing you. He’s hot against you, the thick length of him inside setting your nerves alight and filling you more than anything you’ve ever experienced.

When he pulls out and ruts into you properly, it nearly drives the breath right out your lungs. He pulls out again, carefully, and then in again. 

"Fuck!" You gasp again, squirming a little as he starts up at a steady pace.

Ronal snickers, reaching out to brush some of your sweaty hair off your face. “You see? I told you that you would be cared for. It feels good?”

“It-” You begin, but then Tonowari presses in and the force of it pushes you further up Ronal’s leg, your sensitive breasts dragging along her smooth skin. You wheeze, and try again. “Yes, it feels.. I feel-”

"You do feel good," Tonorwari murmurs into the side of your throat before biting at it, his teeth scraping lightly against your soft skin, "So tight around me. Oh, yes, that's it."

Each thrust pushes you further up Ronal’s thigh, clutching at both her and Tonowari’s hands as though they’re your lifelines as you’re rocked back and forth by turns, like waves on an ocean.

The burning stretch has melted into a hot, liquid sensation that begins pooling in your stomach as you push back to meet his hips the best that you can. It feels so good, and you smile dazedly up at Ronal as you tighten up around Tonowari’s cock; he makes a soft sound of pleasure and wraps his arm firmly around your stomach to keep you close to him.

“Oh,” Ronal coos, cupping your face with one hand, right under your exo-mask. Her voice itself is a little condescending, a little mean, but her touch is so gentle. “Look at that smile. Such a happy girl.”

Goddamn, you should probably be a little annoyed at being on the receiving end of that tone, but to your surprise you find yourself shivering pathetically under her stare. 

You just feel so full, and Tonowari’s thrusts keep pressing up unrelentingly against that one squishy spot inside of you that makes your legs go completely weak. If not for Ronal’s thigh beneath your chest and Tonowari’s hands holding you up by your hips, you think you would have collapsed in a puddle on the spongey marui floor.

Tonowari’s hips are rolling into yours at such a rapid yet effortless pace that your breath is catching in your chest and your eyes are rolling wildly. When Ronal slips a hand under your belly to start playing with your clit, you make a soft, broken-sounding moan and throw your head back eagerly.

You can feel his heavy balls slap against your clit with every thrust, and you don't miss the way they begin to tighten and draw up as his thrusts get faster. He adjusts his angle just slightly, but it's enough to have you dropping bonelessly against Ronal’s thigh as you moan.

"Fuck, there, don't stop!" You gasp, the words coming out on a wheeze. You sound as desperate as you feel, all fucked out and stupid.

You’re met with soft chuckles from the mated couple above you, as though they find it absolutely adorable that you’re making demands.

“We’re not going to stop, little sky demon,” Ronal snickers as Tonowari presses a sloppy kiss between your shoulderblades. “Go ahead and let go.”

The combination of his cock rubbing and grinding against the soft spongey part inside of you and the messy stimulation of your clit has your legs trembling and heat growing rapidly in your belly. It feels like you’re being strung tighter and tighter as your orgasm draws closer, and your breath begins coming in rapid pants.

You just manage to get out the words "Oh, yes-!" before the pleasure growing in your belly crests and your back bows as you start to cum. It feels like the most cathartic orgasm ever, like all of the pressure that's been building up in your body is set free with the sweetest release, made all the sweeter by the fact that Tonowari keeps rocking into you the whole way through, the heavy head of his cock grinding hard against your G-spot the whole time.

Ronal makes a sound of deep satisfaction – she has abandoned the rubbing at her own clit in favour of leaning down to press a little kiss to the side of your head. It’s such a soft gesture, so far from what you would have expected from her given her usual stern demeanour.

Tonowari hisses so violently that it almost startles you – you’re guessing that you must be clenching hard around him. Perhaps that’s what sends him over the edge. The purr he lets out is more reminiscent of the roar of a chainsaw than anything else, and you feel the slick gush of his cum inside you as he chokes out a moan.

Tonowari continues to fuck you through his own orgasm until you turn into an oversensitive, whimpering mess. Finally, finally, what seems like the longest and most drawn out orgasm of your entire life begins to peter out. Your chest heaves and your lungs burn as you try to get your breath back, and you wonder absently if the way your heart is thrumming so desperately in your chest is cause for concern.  You feel like you’re moments away from a  heart attack. Your hips ache and your muscles burn, and your brain  feels as though it's been liquefied. 

You still feel as though you’re mentally miles away when Tonowari gently pulls out of you, before gripping your hips and flipping you around so that you’re on your back. For a long moment, all you can do is stare at the top of the marui as your chest heaves. There’s not a single thought in your damn head – it’s like there’s been a damn factory reset done on your brain.

It could be moments or hours that you lay there; you lose track of time. But soon hands come to lift you, and you allow your head to fall limply against the chest of whoever’s picked you up. Your eyes are still closed, but you feel yourself being carried and laid down somewhere. Hands are still petting you like you’re a damn cat, but you don’t bat them away – it’s nice, in a way. You feel cared for.

When you finally blink your eyes back open, dazed and exhausted, you find yourself almost face to face with Ronal. She’s peering closely at you, a little crease between her brow that smooths out when you open your eyes.

“Ah, you are awake.” She notes. “Sky demons have poor stamina.”

Her head is cushioned against a big blue shoulder, which causes you to look down at the big blue chest you’re laying across. It seems as though they had relocated all three of you to one of the big hammocks at the back of the marui. You’ve been draped across Tonowari’s big broad torso, and Ronal is tucked right up against his side with her hand resting across the small of your back.

“Go easy on her,” Tonowari chuckles, nuzzling at his wife’s temple. “We will work on her stamina.”

Your heart does a funny little leap in your chest, your once still mind leaping into overdrive.

“Oh, shit,” You breathe, wide-eyed. “I can’t believe that just happened.” A single thought pauses your descent into pure delirium, and you raise your head from Tonowari’s chest and squint at Ronal. “Wait, did you get to come-?”

“Yes,” she says simply. “While you were dozing.”

“Oh.” You say. You’re partly relieved that she was satisfied, but you’re mostly disappointed with the fact that you missed it.

Her smile grows sharper as she notices your reaction. “Next time,” She whispers to you. “You will watch.”

Your cheeks heat and you clear your throat as you grow flustered. Oh god, next time. They wanted to do this with you again. Holy shit.

“We will collect your things from Jakesully later,” Tonowari says, before moving to nuzzle at your temple. “For now, rest.”

“My things?” You repeat, blinking dazedly. “But- I’m staying with them to help Kiri.”

“Kiri is fine.” Ronal grumbles, her fingers moving in concentric patterns across the bare skin of your back. “You may check on her in the mornings and evenings. You do not need to stay in their marui.”

Maybe if you didn’t feel as though your brain had been literally fried from the way they had fucked you, you might have been better able to gather your thoughts. As it is, you do as Tonowari had suggested and rest as you flop bonelessly against his chest.

“Moving in together is a big step.” You mumble. You’re trying to make a joke, but you’re so tired that your tone mustn’t match. As it is, it seems to fall flat.

“Yes,” Ronal acknowledges, her fingers kneading at a knot in your lower back. You swear your eyes nearly roll back at the sensation. “Big step. We have discussed it much and watched you often. We will see how it goes.”

For all her ribbing at you about your stamina, she sounds sleepy herself. The severeness of her features have softened, and her stroking at your back turns lazy. Beneath you, pressed tight to your naked chest, Tonowari is still purring. It sends soothing little reverberations down your spine, encouraging you to relax into his big body. His own handsome face has slackened a little in obvious satisfaction, though he sends you a soft little smile when he sees you looking up at him.

The firelight casts a golden hue across his face catching the faint beads of sweat at his temples, making him look devastatingly handsome. You let your fingers slide up the plane of his chest, feeling his thick muscles shift beneath your touch. 

A quiet hum escapes him, barely audible, but filled with blissful pleasure. He dips his head toward you, nose brushing along your temple in a gesture so intimate it nearly steals your breath. “Enjoying yourself, syulang [flower]?” 

You laugh softly, brushing your body against his just enough to spark some heat. “It’s impossible not to,” you tease, arching a brow. “Especially dancing with you like this.” A flirty grin appears while you speak, gently grazing his skin with your fingertips.

Tonowari’s chest rumbles with a low, contented laugh, the sound vibrating softly against your palm. While conversing, the music shifts into something gentler. Still rhythmic and alive, but much warmer, more gentle for the soul. 

He moves closer, his large hands settling along your waist. His thumbs stroke slow circles there, coaxing you to bridge the gap between you that formed while moving to the beat, silently calling for your skin to press against his and allow your body to enter his warm embrace.

You step forward without hesitation, allowing your feet to guide you. Your arms slide around his neck, fingers brushing against his nape, and you pull yourself against him until neither of you has any personal space. 

The moment your body fits against his towering frame, like the final piece completing a puzzle, Tonowari exhales through his nose, as if his mind has been calmed and his body can relax. 

You rest your head against his collarbone first, then you shift just enough to settle your cheek against the warmth of his shoulder. The world around you blurs: the crackling fire, the waves crashing into the sand, the laughter of the Metkayina. All of it softens until the only thing you feel is the steady rise and fall of his breathing.

Tonowari dips his head to rest it gently atop yours, letting his chin graze your hair, his breath warm against your scalp. A soft hum escapes him, a sound you’ve only ever heard in moments where his heart is full. 

Your swaying slows, your steps becoming less about the rhythm and more about following Tonowari's movements. He guides you in a lazy turn, moving along with the pace of the song, allowing your hair to get caught in the breeze.

You cling to him, fingers brushing against his curly hair and the akula teeth necklace that’s resting around his neck. His skin is warm beneath your touch, pulsing faintly with contained energy, the same energy he’s been holding back for hours now, trying to channel his urges into a better outlet. Tonowari would rather savor the closeness of this dance rather than worry about his primal desires. In his mind, he would rather fuel the romantic tension than the sexual.

“I could stay like this all night.” You murmur softly, your voice coming out muffled against his shoulder. There’s a warmth in his arms that sinks into your bones, a kind of comfort you didn’t know you’ve been starved of until you finally tasted it. Being held like this: gently, protectively, without expectation or pressure, feels foreign and familiar all at once. 

Tonowari’s arms tighten slightly around you, his body language responding to your statement before his words have the chance. His breath drifts down the side of your face, a warm exhale that makes your eyes flutter shut. 

While focusing on the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath your cheek, you feel his lips brush the top of your head, pressing a light kiss against your hair. “So could I,” he breathes, barely audible over the bone flute being played in the background.

He shifts his stance, swaying you deeper, and you melt into him completely. Holding you in his arms casts a shadow of peace over him, allowing himself to fully relax and embrace all the occurrences of the day and what’ll be taking place in the future.

Tonowari shifts just enough so that he can look down at you, his lips hovering close to your hairline. “Tonight cannot come fast enough.” And you know exactly what he’s alluding to with that phrase. 

The intimacy that’ll unravel, the sacred bond between two adults who love each other, and the feeling of becoming one flesh, that’s something both of you crave.

His words settle inside you, warming parts of your body that have been untouched by another person for years, places that have been longing for affection. You lift your head slightly so you can see his face, your cheek brushing the strong line of his jaw on its way up. 

“Mm,” you murmur, “I keep thinking about it too.” Your voice is soft, but the tremor in it is unmistakable, feeling your emotions get caught in your throat. “About finally sealing our bond… starting our life together as mates.”

Tonowari loves how you and him are always on the same page, how his thoughts are always similar to yours no matter the topic. Knowing that he isn’t the only one looking forward to tonight, that you feel the same yearning he does, that you are counting down the minutes with the same flutter in your chest —along with a heat stirring in your lower regions— softens something inside him. 

His expression gentles, the hunger in his eyes melting into something far more tender. He lowers his forehead toward yours, the bridge of his nose brushing delicately against yours.

His eyes flutter half-closed, the weight of your words hitting him square in the chest. His hands bring you closer to him, pressing you against the firm plane of his abdomen. “I cannot wait to wake beside you,” he says, “to hold you without having to go home at the end of the night. To call you mine in every way.”

Your breath catches, heart pressing against your ribs as if it’s trying to reach him. Your hands slide from the nape of his neck to cradle his jaw, allowing your thumb to brush the strong column of his throat. “I’m ready,” you say softly, looking into his ocean blue eyes, feeling yourself getting lost in them. “For all of it. For you.”  

In this moment, the world seems to shrink around you, closing in until there is only the press of his body, the warmth of his breath, and the promise glowing in his gaze. Tonowari can feel a stirring in his stomach, a magnetic force that’s tugging at him to make a move. So he does just that.

Tonowari tilts his head, closing the last sliver of space between you. His breath fans across your lips, while his hands glide up your spine, fingers spreading wide as if trying to memorize every curve and quiet tremor that runs through you.

You rise slightly on your toes, drawn in by a force you don’t bother resisting. His heart beats under your fingertips, thumping harder as you get closer. 

Both of your eyes flutter closed, allowing yourselves to be swept away by the buzzing tension. His breath catches, just barely when your lips graze his. Your lips part, a soft inhale escaping as he leans in. Your noses brush once, twice, before you brace yourself for what’s to come. 

Every fiber of your being leans toward him, drawn by gravity, by love, and desire so potent it makes your knees threaten to give out. Your lips are a breath apart now, so close the slightest movement would seal everything the two of you have been aching for since the moment the sun dipped below the horizon.

Tonowari’s fingers curl at the back of your ribs, while his forehead rests against yours. His breath deepens, warm against your parted lips. You tilt your head, welcoming his lips to engulf yours, anticipating the feel of his lips agasnt yours—

When suddenly— 

A voice cuts through the air like a spear.

You jolt subtly, your eyes snapping open just as Tonowari stills, jaw flexing in silent annoyance. He doesn’t pull away immediately. His forehead remains touching yours, his breath still ghosting your lips.

Reluctantly, he straightens. Keeping one hand firm at your waist as he turns to face Elder Rula who’s standing only a few steps away with stiff posture and apologetic expression towards the intimate moment he just shattered, but not apologetic enough to leave. 

Tonowari's posture shifts from tender to authoritative in the blink of an eye, while his tail lashes against the sand, expressing a sharp flick of agitation he doesn’t bother hiding. His ears pin slightly back, and there is a subtle flare of his nostrils, showing how truly irritated he is by this intrusion.

Elder Rula clears his throat, folding his hands respectfully at his front. “Olo’eyktan… forgive me for the interruption. There is a matter that requires your attention.”

Tonowari’s jaw clenches so tightly you can nearly hear the grind of his teeth. His grip at your waist tightens, not possessively, but protectively, as if he’s trying to save the last threads of the moment you were sharing. When he speaks, his voice is low and clipped. “Is it urgent? I am in the middle of celebrating with my betrothed.”

You nearly laugh at how Tonowari manages to keep his words polite while sounding one word away from growling. But you smooth your expression quickly, unwilling to disrespect an Elder, even one who just interpreted what would have been one of the softest, sweetest, most desperately-awaited kisses of your life.

Elder Rula’s ears lower faintly, deciding to go ahead and spit out what he needs to say. “It concerns the eastern net platforms. They have begun to loosen from their anchors. If they drift, it may damage the mauri [homes/pods] structures. We need your approval before moving it.”

Tonowari inhales sharply through his nose, feeling himself grow more upset with every second that passes by. Annoyance ripples through him in a wave so strong you feel it in the air. 

You can tell your soon-to-be mate isn’t taking too well to this interruption. Since he’s already having to deal with waiting until the end of celebration to indulge in his raging desires, his ability to stay composed is a running lower by the second. This intrusion on what little intimacy you and him can participate in to fill your sexual appetite, Tonowari can feel himself about to explode at any given moment.

To make sure that doesn’t happen, you step in before his patience snaps entirely and Elder Rula gets the blunt end of Tonowari’s boiled over frustrations. Your hand rises to rest gently on his chest, right over his heart. 

It’s a grounding touch that brings his eyes to flick down at the contact, the tight line of his lips easing just a fraction. “It’s okay,” you murmur softly, giving him your extra sweet tone to help him relax. “handle what you must and I’ll be waiting when you get back.”

Your words are gentle, soothing, your smile small but sincere. His irritation softens, still simmering, but now directed only at the untimely circumstance, not at the messenger of the news. Tonowari huffs a low breath, not wanting to leave your side but knowing he must get this done. “I will not be long.”

“And when you return we can resume right where we left off,” you whisper before rising on your feet and placing a soft kiss on his cheek, making the last bit of irritation in his expression disappear. 

Tonowari returns the affection, dipping his head and pressing a kiss on your forehead, a silent apology for leaving and promising to make it up to you later. Once contact is made he steps back reluctantly, the loss of his warmth against your body making your skin cool much too quickly.

With one last heated glance at you, one that shines with the fire burning between you and him, Tonowari turns and follows Elder Rula toward the edge of the gathering and to the east end of the main village.

You watch him go, your lips still tingling with the ghost of the kiss that almost happened. When he’s out of your line of sight you exhale and press a hand to your chest, feeling your heart still fluttering wildly at the very thought of his lips pressed against yours.

You stay there for a moment, standing on the warm sand with the fading echo of Tonowari’s touch lingering on your skin. It’s almost embarrassing how you melted right into him, how he swept every thought from your mind until only him remained.

A small, flustered smile tugs at your lips as you try to steady the warmth swirling low in your belly. ‘God… tonight is gonna be… something.’ You think to yourself, your cheeks warming when your mind thinks about the events that will take place once the celebration comes to an end.

Needing something to occupy your hands and something to cool the heat still simmering beneath your skin, you weave through the gathering, passing clusters of Metkayina, making sure you don’t accidentally bump into someone.

After walking for a moment you reach the refreshment table near the far side of the celebration. A few wooden structures holding bowls of fruit, roasted vegetables, varieties of meats, and all forms of beverages.

You reach the section of drinks, grab a carved ladle, and pour a serving of the alcohol into a gourd cup. The dark purple colored liquid swirls inside the cup, catching the lantern light as it settles inside. You pour an amount that’s not enough to get you drunk, but enough to calm your mind and allow your body the luxury of a nice buzz.

You lift the cup to your lips, letting the cool rim press briefly against your mouth before tilting it back for a slow sip. The first thing that hits you is the aroma. It’s fruity, nothing like the Omatikaya alcohol Tsu’tey gave you after the successful stermbeest hunt when you first joined their clan. They have the type of stuff that hits your nose like a slap: earthy and bitter enough to make your eyes water if you inhaled too deeply. 

Metkayina alcohol is the opposite of that. The taste that follows after a long sip is smooth and subtly sweet, with a faint tang of salt that dances over your tongue. There’s a cool rush before a floral heat arrives, spreading down your throat, expanding through your ribs, settling deep into your chest.

Back in the forest, the alcohol was strong and definitely achieved its purpose to get you drunk, but you always felt the need to gulp it down, you never savored it. However, with the Metkayina alcohol, you can tell it is meant to be enjoyed.

You can tell the fermented sea berries and warm fruit that were used to make this were left under the sun to ripen for the perfect concentration. This is liquid honey compared to the Omatikaya’s concoction.

You take another small sip, savoring the sweetness as it blooms across your tongue, and feel the first hints of a pleasant buzz begin at the base of your skull, sliding down your spine, and then loosening the lingering tension from the almost-kiss you weren't able to have. While your shoulders loosen and your heartbeat steadies, you allow your eyes to wander over the celebration from where you stand.

Laughter rises from every direction. Young hunters reenact parts of their iknimaya with exaggerated gestures, sending their friends into hysterics. A group of women share a bowl of fruit, whispering gossip behind knowing smiles. And men drinking together and reminiscing on their younger days when they completed their own iknimaya.

Your heart softens when your eyes find Lo’ak, surrounded by his friends: Rotxo, Ao’nung, and a handful of other village children. They’re splashing each other with handfuls of water, shrieking with laughter every time Lo’ak pretends to fall dramatically into the shallow end. 

He’s glowing with joy, more carefree than you’ve seen him in months. Seeing him happy and enjoying time with his friends fills you with a warmth deeper than the fermented fruit in your hand can provide. 

A smile touches your lips as you take another slow sip, letting the sweetness bloom again on your tongue. The alcohol is doing its job in the best way possible. Not dulling you, but softening you. Letting you breathe. Letting you enjoy the moment without the weight of your past tugging at your ribs. The buzz is pleasant, a small comfort while you wait for Tonowari to return to you.

Just as you lower the cup to your side, a shift in the air makes the fine hairs at the back of your neck stir, like someone’s presence is brushing close to yours. “Enjoying our brew, are you?” A low, calm voice speaks from just beside you.

You turn and find yourself face-to-chest with a towering, broad-shouldered figure. It takes a tilt of your chin to meet their eyes. When you look up and see who it is, your eyes widen in surprise at the person in front of you.

It’s Marowan. Tonowari’s older brother.

You’ve met him a handful of times, always in passing—brief greetings, short exchanges, nothing more. He is rarely home, always traveling with traders, scouts, and distant reef communities. Seeing him up close like this shows how much he’s unmistakably Tonowari’s kin, yet entirely his own creature.

He stands a couple steps taller than his younger brother—9 foot 9 inches—with a frame built of long, defined muscle. Where Tonowari carries the weight of leadership in his stance, grounded and solid, Marowan carries the ease of a wanderer. His shoulders are broad, his arms muscular, but his build is more slender, almost graceful.

His face is sharper, more angular than Tonowari’s. His cheekbones are carved with precision, he has a longer jaw, and his eyes hold a sharper, more mischievous glint. One entire side of his face is marked with intricate tattoos, curling like dark waves over his temple and down along his cheek.

He carries more ink down his right shoulder, sweeping across his deltoid, flowing down his skin until it reaches his forearm. Another dark band encircles his right thigh, almost like a ring of status, though you don’t know the exact meaning yet. His hair is bound in braids. Hundreds of them, small and neat, woven together into a high, knotted bun at the crown of his head. A style that speaks of discipline.

While looking down towards you, his lips lift into a small, knowing smile, one that tells you that he’s been watching you for at least a moment. You blink, gathering yourself and your thoughts before offering a polite smile of your own. “I am. It’s sweeter than what I’m used to.”

Marowan nods once, unsurprised. His voice is smooth and deep, carrying the warm cadence of someone who speaks with charm. “Forest brews burn the tongue. Reef brews warm the heart.”

You let out a small laugh, giving him a nod that shows your agreement with his choice of words because in a way he’s right. “That’s one way to put it.”

His own smile grows, subtle but you notice. His eyes—brighter than Tonowari’s, more teal, less ocean-blue—study your face with a quiet intensity that makes you straighten. However, he doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable or as if your being judged. It seems like he’s just assessing, sensing your energy. “You look well tonight,” Marowan says, tone softened, though there’s a contemplative layer laced within his words. “Happier than the last time we spoke.”

The last time he saw you was when you were still settling into the village, still new to living among the Metkayina. Back then, your eyes held more fear than ease, relearning what safety felt like, and trying to shake the horrific memories of your past while staying present in the future. 

Your life has significantly improved since you and him last spoke. You’ve started letting go of your past and started imagining a bright future, your son is well adjusted and thriving, and most of all your head over heels in love. Things can’t get any better than that. 

You nod gently, taking another sip of the brew in your cup before responding. “Life has gotten better since then.”

Marowan hums, folding his arms loosely behind his back, posture relaxed yet undeniably commanding, as if he’s spent his entire life standing on decked walkways with the wind at his back and the horizon in his sights. “I can see that,” he says. “Joy suits you.”

Marowan’s words hang in the air for a moment, quiet but heavy with meaning. You offer a soft smile, a little shy beneath his scrutiny, even though his gaze is not sharp like Tonowari’s can be. His gaze is more curious, more observant, as if he’s cataloguing you piece by piece.

Before you can respond, Marowan shifts slightly, adopting a stance that feels intentional. His hands slide from behind his back to rest loosely at his sides, his tail tracing a slow arc through the sand. “Walk with me?” he asks warmly. “Just for a moment.” He gestures with his chin toward the quieter part of the shore.

It’s phrased like a request, not a command. But there’s intent behind it, you can tell. Before you respond you glance toward where Tonowari disappeared, looking at the place you and him danced in front of the clan, and then back at Marowan. 

When Marowan follows your gaze and realizes Tonowari’s on your mind, he gives a soft, reassuring huff of a laugh. “I won’t steal you for long. My brother would gut me if I kept his future muntxate [wife] from him on a night like this.”

You breathe in the cool night air, letting out a light chuckle from his teasing comment that has truth in it. Tonowari is already on edge when it comes to having you to himself so if his brother holds you captive for too long Tonowari will have a fit. And something in you knows he isn’t asking out of idle curiosity, so you nod. “Alright.”

Marowan gestures for you to follow him away from the crowd and towards the outskirts of the festival so you can hear him clearly over the music and to ensure no one will overhear anything not meant for them. 

For a moment, neither of you speak. The Metkayina simply studies you with that keen, calculating gaze before he breaks the silence. “I wished to speak with you before the night ends,” he begins, “before you and Tonowari bind your lives together.” His tone deepens with honesty, something you appreciate. “We have spoken before, yes. But never in truth.”

You tilt your head, lips lifting into a small, half-smile. “You’re never still long enough to catch,” you say softly. “Always traveling.”

Marowan is the clan’s diplomat. He acts as Tonowari’s eyes, ears, and hands beyond Awa’atlu. He represents the Metkayina among distant reef clans, trade networks, and coastal territories. It’s his duty to carry news, negotiate agreements, forge alliances, and temper disputes before they swell into conflict so peace can be maintained.

His life is built on reading people, understanding their intentions, their hearts, and their weaknesses, long before they ever speak them aloud.

Because of his role in the clan, his time at home is limited. He travels for days, weeks, and sometimes even months at a time. So he has watched your relationship with Tonowari grow through whatever pieces of information made their way to him on his travels. Messengers reaching him at distant coves. Tlalim [Wind Traders] carrying spoken news from Awa’atlu. And of course… through Tonowari himself. 

Every time Marowan returned to the main village, even if it was brief, Tonowari spoke of you. At first lightly, only simple mentions. But, eventually it became more each time he visited home and it became impossible not to notice that Tonowari held the weight of a man rediscovering love.

So this quiet walk is more than curiosity. It was a family’s obligation. A big brother’s instinct. A man making sure the person who would soon hold Tonowari’s heart understands its worth, its scars, and willingness to treat it with devotion.

The corner of Marowan’s mouth twitches, the closest thing to amusement you’ve seen from him so far. He lets out a soft exhale, half a laugh, and half something heavier. “True,” he murmurs, answering your tease about his travels. “But I returned tonight with purpose.”

He pauses, something shifting in his expression. Still controlled, still measured, but no longer purely observational.  There’s intention in his gaze, showing that this talk is no longer casual. “Tonowari asked me to be here.”

You blink, surprise softening your features as you absorb his words, an unexpected warmth spreading beneath your ribs. “He… asked for you?” you repeat, voice gentler than before. 

“Yes. Quite firmly, in fact. Sent word days ago. Said he wanted me home for iknimaya.” A brief glimmer of humor flickers in his eyes, thinking about the moment he got word from the southern reef clan’s Olo’eykte [female clan leader] he was visiting that Tonowari requested his presence. “My brother does not… request things often. Not unless they matter.”

You release a quiet breath, the corners of your lips lifting, thinking about how Tonowari is quite stern when he wants to be. “That sounds like him,” you murmur. “Stubborn with the things he cares about.”

“He is,” Marowan agrees. “And you are now one of those things.”

Your heart stutters because you know Marowan doesn’t mean it lightly. His tone doesn’t carry flattery, it shows intent. His words are deliberate and it makes you feel more comfortable when talking to him, knowing he won’t sugarcoat things when talking to you, a trait you’ve always admired.

“So he wanted you to… check on me?” you say with a teasing tilt of your head, though your tone carries real curiosity beneath your playful cadence.

Marowan huffs, amused, enjoying this playful side of you. Seeing your ability to be fluid in conversation shows your personality and allows the Metkayina to see one of the reasons Tonowari has chosen you. “He wanted me to meet you.” He corrects, wanting to make sure you don’t get the wrong idea. “Not in passing. Not in haste. But fully.”

Of course Tonowari would want that. He wanted his brother, the person who knew him before he was Olo’eyktan, before he was a mate, before he was a father, to see you. To know you. To understand the woman who had quietly rekindled something in him he thought would remain buried with Ronal forever. 

Tonowari wanted Marowan to see you the way he did. To see your strength, your gentleness, your resilience. The softness you carry after surviving so much. The way you love his own children with a heart of gold. For him to see the way your presence had brought a certain light back to his life. Tonowari wanted his brother to witness the woman who would soon be his mate and it seems Marowan took that request seriously.

Marowan looks out to the festival, toward his people celebrating the accomplishments of their fellow man. “You must understand,” he says, “my role… keeps me distant.” He gestures vaguely to the horizon, where the sea stretches out farther than your mind can imagine. “I see more of the world than most. But my home, my family, they are dear to me.”

You nod, already knowing this much about him from when Tonowari speaks about him and gathering your own thoughts from your previous conversations. While waiting for him to continue, you watch the diplomat in him revealing itself. “Despite my absence from the village, I knew of you long before I returned tonight,” he says. “Because my brother could not keep your name from leaving his lips.”

Marowan’s mouth lifts subtly. Not quite a smile but something just as gentle. “At first,” he admits, “I thought he spoke of you only because you were new to the clan. A woman with a story worth telling. A mother protecting her son. Someone who is… rebuilding.”

“Before, he had barely spoken of anything with warmth since Ronal’s passing. His mind was focused on his children and the clan. He closed off the parts of himself that used to belong to joy. To companionship. And I feared that part of him was gone forever.” Marowan’s expression softens, though the lines around his eyes crease with old sorrow, remembering the time when his brother was grieving the loss of his mate. “But suddenly… on my next return, he spoke of you differently.”

Hearing Marowan’s words makes the lump in your throat swell. Tonowari has shared with you the emotions he felt for you since the beginning of your relationship but hearing someone else’s perspective, someone who knows Tonowari well, makes your heart race. You breathe through the ache in your chest, meeting Marowan’s keen stare, wanting to hear what he says next.

“Soon,” Marowan continues, “each time I returned, his demeanor changed. He looked lighter…” He pauses, studying your face, noticing the emotion in your eyes. “He told me you were kind. Brave. Patient. That your presence brought him peace he had not felt in years. That you reminded him he was still a living man, not only a leader or a single father.”

The ocean hums against the shore. Bladder lantern light flickers across his tattoos, showing the softness in his facial expression as he shares his heart. “You gave him back a piece of himself,” Marowan tells you. “At first it was small, but now…” He exhales with a shake of his head. “Now, he is a man reborn.”

Your throat tightens painfully, and you swallow, staring out at the waves because his words hit places inside you that are tender. Hearing how Tonowari was riddled with grief for years and how his brother thought he would never see that romantic side of his brother again but you coming here changed that, makes you emotional. It makes you realize that everything is divinely appointed, whether we know it or not.

Marowan watches your reaction carefully, then shifts slightly closer. Not threateningly, but with the steadiness of someone who carries the role of protector even when he travels far from home. “So understand,” he says quietly, “I do not ask you questions out of doubt. I ask them because I carry my brother’s heart in many ways. I have guarded it for years and I will continue to until I lay among our ancestors.”

When he says that, you understand why he sparked up this conversation, why he isolated you from the festival, and why his face holds such a serious expression. He has come to see if you are worthy of Tonowari’s heart, if you're the type of woman his brother should be mating with. “You wish to know if I am worthy enough for your brother,” you murmur, naming the unspoken truth.

Marowan’s chin tilts in a single, precise nod. “I do.” The need to protect Tonowari is rooted in Marowan. It’s been there since the day his mother told him he would become a brother. All of his life he’s been protecting him, having his back, helping him through life, wanting nothing but the best for him and tonight is no different. 

For a moment, you look past him and toward the end of the village where Tonowari is somewhere among the small cluster of Na’vi, finishing up the urgent matter so he can find his way back into your arms. The thought of him brings a smile to your lips. When you think back to the way you and him were dancing earlier, that same warmth from that moment fills your veins. 

Your voice is steady when you speak, but your heart thrums hard beneath your ribs because this is the truth, the marrow-deep truth you rarely say aloud. “I know the pain your brother has endured,” you begin softly. “I know what it means for him to open his heart again,” you murmur, taking a small step closer so he can see the sincerity in your face, “because even though our circumstances were different, I closed off my heart.”

The diplomat’s eyes sharpen, out of both suspicion and attention, wondering what you mean by that. He listens with the same intensity he uses when reading unfamiliar leaders, foreign clans, and dangerous waters.

You inhale softly, allowing yourself to become vulnerable, wanting Marowan to truly understand why you’ve fallen in love with his brother. “Tonowari has helped me heal in ways I didn’t think were possible. He took a heart that was broken, bruised, and he held it without fear. He never made me feel small. He never rushed me. Everything my past was, he’s the opposite.” You glance down at your fingers, tracing the rim of your cup before meeting Marowan’s gaze once more, trying to push down some emotion before continuing, not wanting any tears to spill. “With the… baggage I had from my marriage, many men would have stepped back. Or decided I wasn’t worth the effort, but Tonowari didn’t.”

Marowan hasn’t heard your story, only snippets from what Tonowari has told him and even those things were surface level. No one knows full story except for Tonowari so when Marowan hears those personal pieces from you, it allows him to understand you more. “He has seen parts of me no one else has. Parts I never thought I’d show again. I’ve been vulnerable with him about things I wouldn’t speak of with anyone else…” Your breath trembles, not with weakness but with the weight of speaking your truth. “And he never ran, he just held me tighter.”

There’s a beat of silence, allowing Marowan to digest those large doses of details you gave him. You can feel the wind hum gently against your ears, and you take it as a sign to finish your thought. “So yes,” you continue, voice growing warmer, even stronger, as you confidently declare your intentions with Tonowari. “I plan to love him with all my heart, to replenish his soul, and strengthen his spirit. Just as he’s done for me.” 

Marowan doesn’t speak at first. He simply looks at you and something in his expression shifts in a way you weren’t expecting. It’s a subtle yet precise shift, the kind of softening that only happens in a man who rarely lets himself soften at all.

The diplomat in him falls away. The traveler, the negotiator. All of those layers peel back, leaving only the older brother who once held Tonowari by the shoulders through heartbreak, who watched him fall apart after Ronal’s passing, who feared he would never see light return to his brother’s eyes.

And now he stands before the woman who helped bring that light back. His jaw faintly tightens as he exhales through his nose, feeling a sense of emotion wash over him. His gaze sweeps over your face again, not assessing this time, but as if your words have given him a new level of understanding. 

He had come here seeking truth and instead he found something more precious than that. Your honesty hits him harder than he expected. Hard enough that his tail stills behind him, that the tension in his shoulders ease a fraction, and the air around him loses its edge. 

He isn’t a man easily swayed but tonight your words struck something inside him. He sees the fractures you hinted at. He sees the healing Tonowari has helped you gain. He sees the strength it took for you to stand in front of him and bare your truth without flinching. And beneath all of it, he recognizes that you love Tonowari just as much as he loves you, that your heart fully belongs to him.

For a man who is difficult to read, Marowan’s silence speaks volumes. It’s clear that your answer wasn’t what he expected but it seems like it satisfied him just the same. Slowly, he draws in a breath, gathering himself, and returning to his purpose with a steadier spine. There is still one last truth he needs to hear before he makes his final decision about you.

“That is good,” he murmurs, voice low, the word not approval exactly, but it shows acknowledgment which is a great sign. His gaze sharpens, but now with something gentler beneath it, something earned. “Then… I have only one more question.”

You tense, not out of fear, but because something in his tone tells you this question is the one matters, that it’ll truly make or break how he views you. Marowan takes a single step closer, enough that you catch every sharp line of his tattoos, even the glint in his eyes. 

“If Tonowari falters,” he asks, “ when leadership wears him down, if grief returns, if the past claws at him on a night you do not expect… will you still stand beside him? Not as his mate. But as his anchor?”

Your heart thuds at the question. Because it isn’t ceremonial nor is it polite. It is a question from a concerned brother, a man who saw Tonowari through storms no one else witnessed, who held him upright through seasons of grief, who watched him rot from the inside out during the darkest time of his life.

This question is the gate to him accepting you and your answer is the key, so you answer without hesitation, just like before. “Yes,” you begin simply, the word carrying not only promise, but conviction. “Tonowari needs someone for the shadows, the struggles, the nights he wants to hide from his own heart.”

You inhale, allowing the words to flow smoothly as they flood your mind. “If he doubts, I’ll remind him of who he is. If he breaks, I will place him back together. I will not leave him, no matter how hard or painful things become. I’ll stand with him through all of it, just as he does for me.” Your voice deepens with emotion, but never wavers. You give yourself a moment to breath, to gather your last thoughts, before completing your answer. “Tonowari is worth that. Worth everything.”

Silence settles between you. Then Marowan exhales slowly, a long, steady breath that sounds like release, as if hearing your words has helped soothe his thoughts. His shoulders drop a fraction, tension easing in a way that tells you he has been carrying these questions for longer than just tonight. “…That,” he says quietly, “was the answer I prayed to hear.”

The word ‘prayed’ lands in your chest with unexpected weight. For him to admit hope, that he asked Eywa for guidance where his brother’s heart was concerned, it makes you feel honored to some degree. It makes your throat tighten and your eyes burn faintly, emotion rising swiftly and uninvited.

Marowan lifts two fingers and presses them briefly to his chest, directly over his heart. The gesture is deliberate, a sign of respect, of truth, something that isn’t given freely. “My brother has chosen well,” he says, voice deepening with sincerity. “Better than I could have imagined.”

The approval settles over you like a blessing you didn’t know you were waiting for. You didn’t need it, Tonowari would have chosen you regardless, with or without anyone’s consent, but you know how much this will mean to him to have it. You can already picture his reaction: the subtle relief in his eyes, the quiet pride he won’t voice aloud, and the peace of knowing his brother sees what he sees. 

Tonowari would have mated with you even if the world stood against him, but knowing his brother approves of you, will make him happy in a way only familial approval can.

Seriousness eases from Marowan’s face, replaced by something lighter and much more relaxed. His tone shifts, the weight of responsibility easing from his shoulders. The corners of his mouth curve into a faint smirk, mischief slipping back in like a tide returning to shore. “You have eased my worries.” he says lightly, waving his hand as if he’s brushing the last of them away. “I will not allow my doubts to linger any longer.”

Then he leans slightly, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret, eyes gleaming with unmistakable older-brother wickedness. “Should Tonowari ever give you trouble… you may send word to me. I will return and knock him senseless.”

A laugh bursts from you before you can stop it. Warm, genuine, carried by relief and fondness all at once. You shake your head, amusement dancing in your eyes. “I’ll hold you to that,” you say warmly, half-teasing, half-serious. “I expect swift intervention.”

Marowan’s smirk widens into something close to a grin. He steps back then, giving you space, allowing you to breathe again as the moment settles. When he speaks next, his tone carries weight, not playful or testing, but ceremonial in its own quiet way.

“You have my blessing,” he says. “Not as the clan’s diplomat. But as his brother.” Marowan dips his head in a slow, deliberate nod, one given only to people he deems worthy. “Guard his heart, and he will guard yours.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

After that, the tension in the air softens. The heavy part of the conversation has been spoken, understood, and now sealed. Marowan’s posture reflects it; his shoulders aren’t as rigid, his tail has relaxed into a slow sway behind him, and the sharpness in his eyes warms into something almost fond.

You breathe a small laugh, swirling the last remnants of fermented fruit in your cup, feeling like the spotlight on you has finally dimmed. “Well,” you murmur, voice lighter now, “I’m glad I passed your… inspection.”

Marowan scoffs softly, thinking your choice of wording is funny. “Inspection? No.” His lips twitches, enjoying the fact he was able to put you in the hot seat for a moment, something he enjoys doing as a diplomat. “Interrogation is more fitting.”

You chuckle, nudging him lightly with your elbow. “Oh, is that what we’re calling it?”

“If you think that was harsh,” he says dryly, “you should have seen what I put Tonowari through the first time he told me he wanted to court Ronal.” 

Your brows rise, wondering how harsh things could’ve gone when he questioned Ronal for the first time. “Was it as intense?”

“Worse.” He leans in slightly. “She cried.”

Your jaw drops, not believing Ronal, a woman who is known for her strength, blunt attitude, and sternness, would cry just from a line of questioning. “You made Ronal cry?”

His brow muscle lifts, feigning thought, realizing maybe he selected a poor choice of words. “Perhaps not cry… but her nose flared, she hissed at me, and then she left immediately afterward.” 

When Tonowari first began courting Ronal, they were young and it was during the same season Tonowari was announced to be the clan’s next Olo’eyktan. Marowan, acting as a protector, wanted to be certain that Ronal sought his brother’s heart, not the power that would eventually follow him. 

So he questioned her relentlessly: probing, testing, and questioning until even a woman as intimidating as Ronal reached the edge of her patience. By the end of it, she was livid, pride bristled, dignity intact but very offended.

Marowan had learned what devotion looked like that day, but he had also learned where his line was. Because of that incident, Tonowari made him swear not to repeat the same mistake.

He warned Marowan that if reduced you to tears, anger, or treated you a fraction of the way he had Ronal, there would be consequences neither diplomacy nor brotherhood would save him from.

You burst into laughter, clapping a hand over your mouth as the image forms in your mind. Ronal, fierce and strong-willed, brought to her breaking point by Marowan’s relentless questioning. “Marowan,” you scold between laughs. “That’s terrible!”

He only shrugs, entirely unapologetic, a glint of smug satisfaction in his eyes, the same look of a man who knows exactly how far he can push before retreating. “What?” he says lightly. “They mated not long after. I like to think my scrutiny hastened the process.”

All you can do is shake your head, huffing a laugh through your nose. If this is him now, you can only imagine how he acted when he was younger. “You’re insufferable.”

“Mm,” he agrees without hesitation, nodding once as if it’s a title he wears proudly. “So people tell me.”

Before you can think of a clever retort, footsteps approach behind you, a presence you could recognize even in a storm. The sound alone sends a small thrill through your chest. 

You turn just as Tonowari steps into view. His gaze sweeps the quieter stretch of beach until his eyes lock onto you. The moment they do, something in his posture softens, the tension he’s been carrying easing the instant he finds you safe and smiling.

When his attention shifts, his brow lines lift slightly when he spots Marowan at your side, surprise flickering before it turns into something warmer. Something along the lines of relief and fond irritation. “Brother,” Tonowari greets, voice filled with amusement. “You have returned. I thought you would not make it in time for Iknimaya.”

Tonowari fully steps forward, and before another word can be said, Marowan turns toward him with a huff of a laugh. The brothers close the distance in two long strides and clasp each other in a firm embrace, forearms locking as their shoulders thump together. 

Marowan pulls back first, his hands still gripping Tonowari’s arms as his sharp eyes scan him head to toe. “You look older,” he remarks dryly, tone innocent but eyes wicked, clearly enjoying himself. It’s said with the kind of affection only an older brother can get away with, the unspoken ‘leadership has aged you’ hanging between the words.

Tonowari lets out a short snort, seeming unimpressed, though the corner of his mouth betrays him with a hint of a smile. He tightens his grip briefly before releasing Marowan’s arm. “And you,” he counters smoothly, gaze flicking pointedly to the horizon. “still look like a man who does not know how to remain in one place long enough to grow old.”

“Someone must keep the world from unraveling while you sit comfortably as Olo’eyktan,” Marowan replies, then flicks a glance your way. “And I had to come,” he adds, voice shifting just enough to carry weight. “I could not miss the chance to speak properly with the woman I shall call ‘sister’ after tonight.”

Tonowari’s eyes flick to you at Marowan’s words, something soft and proud blooming there. He steps beside you and his hand rests on small of your back without thinking, thumb brushing in a grounding, familiar stroke as if to tether himself to you.

“You spoke with her,” Tonowari says, not a question, but an observation. There’s trust in his tone, curiosity as well. He knew that you and Marowan would soon speak, he just prayed that his brother wouldn’t question you too intensely but seeing you with a happy expression proves that his brother took heed of his words.

Marowan hums, nodding his head. “Mhm. Properly.” He tilts his chin slightly, studying Tonowari now with open satisfaction, deciding to give his little brother his props. “You chose well.” The eldest brother doesn’t think Tonowari could have done any better. You’re beautiful, smart, witty, seemingly strong-willed, gentle, and sweet. All the things that can make a woman the perfect mate.

That alone earns him a look from Tonowari, warning and fond all at once. “Careful,” he says. “You are treading close to sentiment.” Tonowari is appreciative of his brother liking you, but he doesn’t want him liking you too much. He’s a possessive man when it comes to you and he doesn’t even like the thought of another man feeling romantic about his woman, brother or not.

Marowan laughs, thinking it’s cute how his brother is all prickly from his compliment, knowing that deep down he enjoys the praise. “Do not pretend you do not enjoy hearing it.”

Then the older brother's gaze shifts back to you, expression sharpening into something keen. “I arrived just before the final trails,” he continues, waving a hand vaguely toward the west side of the island where iknimaya had taken place. “I saw the last of it.”

Your brows lift slightly, not knowing he was there. You didn’t notice him but maybe you were too high on adrenaline and celebrating with Tonowari and the kids to notice. “You did?”

“I did,” he confirms. “And I saw you ride your tsurak [skimwing] down like you were Metkayina bred.” He says, impressed with your skills. “Clean mount. Strong balance. You trusted the dive.” He clicks his tongue once, approving your ability to ride the warriors mount. “Not many do on their first true run.”

Tonowari’s chest lifts subtly at that, pride no longer hidden in the shadows. “I taught her.”

Marowan’s grin spreads, getting ready to yet again tease his brother. “Clearly.” He gives Tonowari a slow, assessing look. “Your teaching has improved since you last had a numeyu [student].”

Tonowari hisses, throwing a hand in the air at his brother, deflecting his nonsense talk. “My teaching was never lacking.”

“No,” Marowan agrees easily, not arguing on that fact. “But your patience was.” He glances at you again, something warm and amused softening his sharp features. “It seems you have remedied that.” 

You laugh softly, feeling the gentle press of Tonowari’s hand at your back tighten just a fraction, as if touching you is helping him stay level headed in this conversation. “He was an excellent karyu [teacher],” you say, singing your soon to be husband’s praises. Complimenting and defending his abilities in the same breath. “Firm, but steady. He never let me doubt myself, or allow me to give up.”

Marowan’s gaze flicks between you and his brother, and for a moment he simply watches. Taking in the way Tonowari stands practically connected to your hip and the way his posture angles subtly toward you as if the world might crumble without that some form of contact. “Eywa help me,” Marowan mutters lightly, shaking his head. “If I did not know better, I would think you were already mated.”

Tonowari exhales through his nose, something like a warning rumble tucked within his chest. “You test my restraint, brother.”

“And you have plenty of it,” Marowan replies smoothly. Then, with a wicked glint in his eye, he adds, “At least until the festival ends.”

You choke on the last sip of fermented fruit you just drank, eyes widening at Marowan’s dirty and alluding comment. Tonowari groans, dragging a hand down his face, wondering why Eywa had to give him such an annoying brother. “Marowan.”

“What?” His brother lifts both hands in mock innocence. “I merely acknowledge what the entire village is thinking.” And Marowan is telling the truth when he says that. The Metkayina have always been curious about you, from the very moment you set foot on their island. Now that you’re going to be mating with their Olo’eyktan, they are curious how a sky person mates and how it’s different from their customs.

“That is enough,” Tonowari says firmly, though the smile tugging at his mouth betrays him.

Marowan only hums, clearly pleased he’s struck the exact nerve he was aiming for. “You must admit,” he adds casually, eyes flicking between you and his brother, “there is a certain… anticipation in the air. Even Eywa can feel it.”

That earns him a shove from Tonowari’s massive hand to the chest. Marowan barely moves, only steps back an inch or two, heels digging into the sand as he easily steadies himself, smirking like a man who’s just won a private game.

You clap a hand over your mouth to hide your laugh, finding the exchange they are having amusing. Their bickering is not only hilarious, but endearing. It reminds you of Ao’nung and Lo’ak, only scaled up, heavier, and far more dramatic.

Marowan dusts off his shoulder theatrically, not phased by the shove from his brother. This has happened many times over the years and it somehow never gets old. “Careful, brother,” he drawls. “You nearly wrinkled my tattoos.”

Tonowari lets out a short breath, jaw tightening just enough to be noticeable. “One day,” he mutters, “I will forget that you are still my brother.” Marowan is the only man on this island who can relentlessly tease Tonowari, make dirty jokes, and compliment his woman without facing real consequences. If it wasn’t for them sharing the same blood, Tonowari would have already stopped him dead in his tracks.

Marowan’s smirk only widens, clearly delighted by the threat rather than deterred by it. He leans in just slightly, dropping his voice with conspiratorial glee. “Well, tonight is not that day.” His eyes flicker meaningfully between you and Tonowari. “Especially tonight… when you and your soon-to-be mate sneak off to—”

Tonowari’s hand snaps up immediately, palm pressing firmly against Marowan’s chest yet again, shoving him a little more forcefully than before, not liking this type of language being spoken around you. “Do not finish that sentence.”

Marowan lifts both hands in mock surrender, though the wicked curl of his mouth says he absolutely will finish it, just not here and in front of you. The only thing stopping him from continuing to torment his brother until no end is your presence.

“I will spare you further torment.” he says generously, stepping back to give you both some space. “Besides,” his gaze drifts toward the gathering, where the music begins to shift, drums slowing, voices rising with anticipation. “It seems the closing words are near.”

As if Eywa herself heeded the cue, a subtle ripple moves through the crowd. Conversations soften. Laughter lowers. Musicians ease their hands, letting the final beats fade into something softer. Elders step closer to the group of na'vi, lanterns swaying gently as the village turns its attention.

Marowan dips his head toward you, respectful and gentle. “Sister,” he says simply. Then to Tonowari, quieter, but no less firm: “I will see you later. Do not keep her waiting longer than necessary.”

Tonowari’s hand loosens at your back. “Go,” he says dryly, nodding his head towards the cluster of people heading back towards the center of the beach. “Before I say something I cannot take back.”

He turns, already retreating, then pauses just long enough to glance back over his shoulder. His gaze falls on Tonowari, not being able to leave without on last tease. “Just remember, brother. Pace yourself. I would not want the Olo’eyktan to embarrass himself on his mating night.”

“Marowan!” Tonowari growls.

Marowan laughs under his breath, thoroughly pleased with himself, throughly enjoying getting under Tonowari’s skin because he prickles so easily. “Enjoy your night,” he says, voice drifting back to something genuine. “Both of you.” With that, he turns and disappears into the crowd, swallowed by the shadows, leaving you and Tonowari alone.

Once Tonowari feels himself begin to calm, he exhales slowly, eyes following the direction his brother vanished before he looks down at you. “I apologize, for my brother.” he mutters. “He has always enjoyed testing limits, especially mine.”

You lean into him, laughter fading into something tender, and he wraps an arm around your hip, pulling you close. The gesture is instinctive, protective, and intimate, enough to make your belly flutter.

You smile, “No need,” you say with a soft laugh, thinking about the little storm he stirred up in Tonowari, but also the kindness he gave you earlier. “I like him.” 

And you truly mean it. Beneath Marowan’s sharp wit and watchful gaze, you sensed a quiet steadiness. Someone who loves deeply. His care is protective and sincere, rooted in loyalty to his brother, and that alone makes you like him.

“You are the only one,” Tonowari says, “who could say that about him and mean it.” He studies your face, as though he’s searching for doubt or forced politeness but he ends up finding neither. The tight line of his jaw eases, shoulders relaxing as a quiet breath leaves him, the earlier tension finally loosening its hold. “He grows on people in time,” he says lowly, “but few could say that about him this early in knowing him and mean it the way you do.”

There’s something similar to relief in his expression, not because Marowan is liked, but because he’s understood. “He worries,” Tonowari admits, voice softer now, meant only for you. “Not only about me. About the clan. About the future.” He pauses, taking a small breath before continuing. “But he has always carried his concern like a blade. Sharp, stubborn.”

You tilt your head slightly, meeting his eyes, placing a hand on his cheek. “That comes from love,” you murmur, looking up at him with golden irises that shine with understanding.

That earns you the faintest smile from Tonowari. It is small, but it is real. He leans in just enough that his forehead brushes yours, an intimate gesture hidden in plain sight. “You see him clearly,” he says, pulling you closer to him, his hands traveling up to your torso. “As you see me.” 

Before you can answer, a low call ripples outward, carrying across the many yards of land, a signal which means it is time for closing remarks. Tonowari straightens, the weight of his role settling back onto his shoulders. “Come,” 

His hand slides from your physique to your fingers, lacing them together without hesitation. The simple act sends a thrill through you because it is not hidden or careful. It is a sign to show the surrounding Na’vi the love you and him share. 

Together, you and Tonowari turn from the quieter edge of the shore and begin the slow walk back toward the heart of the celebration. People part instinctively at Tonowari’s approach, warriors dipping their heads out of respect for their leader, elders offering quiet nods, and children pausing in their games to watch you both pass. 

With all the attention surrounding him, Tonowari’s focus never strays far from you. His hand remains firm around yours, thumb brushing your knuckles in a subtle, calming rhythm. You can feel the shift in him as you near the front of the crowd, the way his spine straightens, the way his breathing deepens. Leadership settles over him like a mantle, yet tonight it rests easier than it ever has in years.

The music fades as you reach the clearing. Drums begin to slow while other musicians lower their instruments, voices lower, and a hush settles over the clan until the only thing that’s heard is the crackling of the fire.

The last murmurs dissolve as the Tsahìk steps forward, ready to address her people, and waiting for the Olo’eyktan to stand beside her. Flames from the bonfire leap and then settle, reflecting in dozens of eyes turned toward the center. 

Tonowari straightens fully now, shoulders squaring as the weight of duty slides back into place. He doesn’t let go of you. If anything, he draws you a fraction closer, his hand firm at your waist. “Stand close,” he murmurs, dipping his head so only you can hear. “Where I can see you.”

You nod, fingers curling briefly into his wrist, feeling your heart tighten in the best way possible, knowing he wants you within eyeshot of him. “Of course.”

He looks down at you then, really looks, and you catch the warmth in his eyes. With a final squeeze at your waist, lingering just a bit longer than necessary, he releases you and steps forward, going to stand next to the clan’s Tsahìk.

You move to the front of the crowd as he asked, standing where his gaze can find you without an ounce of effort. You feel it when his eyes flick back to you, just once, before he faces his people.

The Tsahìk, Alma, lifts her staff and taps it once into the sand. The sound is soft, but it carries. She is older, her face etched lines that equal years of wisdom and weathered grace. Once, long ago, she stood as Tsahìk in her prime. She guided the Metkayina through births and storms, through blessings and grief, until the day she stepped aside so Ronal could take her place beside Tonowari. 

When Ronal was taken to live in the spirit world, Alma returned to her role as the clan’s spiritual leader. Not out of ambition or duty, but out of love for her people and knowing that they will need spiritual guidance and someone to interpret the will of Eywa.

Secretly, Tonowari did not want to replace the role of Tsahìk in the beginning. Not because he disliked her or thought she was incompetent, but because his heart didn't want to face it. His grief was still raw at the same and the only person he wanted to lead the clan beside was Ronal. But, as the Olo'eyktan, he knew that it needed to be done, so for the clan's sake he agreed to Alma being reinstated as Tsahìk.

Alma's eyes sweep across the sea of Metkayina, and when she speaks, her voice is gentle, powerful, and enduring all in one. “People of the Metkayina,” she begins, staff resting firmly at her side. “Tonight, we honor change.”

A murmur ripples through the crowd, quickly settling as she continues. “The young ones who faced the trials of iknimaya no longer stand before us as children.” Her gaze drifts toward the people who completed the rites of passage, pride beaming in her expression. “They have been tested and came out on the other side. They have called to Eywa, and the Great Mother has answered.”

She lifts her chin slightly, looking out into the crowd. “From this night onward, they will be seen differently. Not only by the people, but by Eywa herself.” The words settle heavily, like a blessing laid gently over every soul present. “They are no longer children who follow,” she continues. “They are now adults who will lead.”

Her gaze lifts, sweeping the people once more, then settles briefly on Tonowari. Alma turns then, angling her body toward Tonowari. She inclines her head, a quiet gesture of respect and acknowledgment. “Olo’eyktan,” she says simply, passing the floor to him.

Tonowari steps forward at her word, nodding his head in respect before addressing the Metkayina. For a moment, he says nothing, but his gaze sweeps the crowd until his eyes find you. You and him lock eyes for a moment before he starts his remarks. “My people,” he begins, voice easily carrying over the crowd. “Tonight, we stand at the edge of many beginnings.”

He gestures outward first, to all the young Metkayina who completed their iknimaya. “You faced the trials set before you,” he says, pride threading his tone. “You have endured and returned stronger than before. From this night on, you will walk among us not as children, but as adults. Your voices will carry weight. Your choices will matter.”

A murmur of agreement ripples through the crowd, people excitedly utilating for their own family and friends who have passed the rights of passage. With the first phase of his speech out of the way, now the second phase can begin. Slowly, his hand lifts again but it doesn’t just cast over the sea of Metkayina, it moves in your direction, making every pair of eyes follow.

You feel it all at once. The heat of the fire, the sudden awareness of dozens of eyes turning toward you, your heart thudding hard enough you’re sure the entire reef can hear it. Instinctively, your breath catches, wondering why Tonowari has ushered everyone’s attention to you.

Tonowari’s gaze never leaves you as his hand settles, palm open in your direction, as if he’s presenting you to the clan in a new light. “There is one amongst them,” he continues, voice lowering just enough to draw the crowd closer, “who did not have to face iknimaya… yet chose to.”

Tonowari’s lips part again, but this time he speaks your name. His voice is clear and unmistakable. The sound of your name on his tongue, his rich accent vibrating through your ears, steals the breath from your lungs.

You didn’t expect this, not by a long shot. Hearing your name spoken so openly, before the entire clan makes your pulse stutter, heat rushing to your cheeks as a soft ripple moves through the crowd. A few heads turn more sharply now, recognition forming in their eyes. 

You and Tonowari haven’t been hiding your relationship these past few months, especially with that tension-filed dance you and him shared in front of everyone, but him claiming you so openly in front of everyone changes everything. “She walked the path of iknimaya beside our young ones,” he continues, eyes still looking your direction. “Not because she was asked. Not because she was born to it. But because she chose to face Eywa as we do. To be tested, seen, and to belong.”

The words land deep, settling in your heart, making your eyes water. Around you, the Metkayina begin to listen intently, wanting to hear what their Olo’eyktan has to say. There’s no murmurs or movement, they just focus their attention on you and the man who loves you enough to stand before his people and profess his love.

Tonowari’s hand lowers slowly to his chest, palm resting over his heart. “You all know what was taken from me,” he says quietly, ears pinning to the side of his head as his mind reflects on his past love.

The words land heavy amongst the Metkayina, shared grief rippling through the crowd. They remember their Tsahìk Ronal who had a great reign. She made an impact on her people and she’ll never be forgotten. Peoples faces soften as they think of her. Warriors shift in positions, remember her as a fierce fighter. Healers bow their heads, remembering her as an excellent teacher. And as a collective, they remember her as someone who loved her people dearly, all the up until her last breath.

Everyone remembers the seasons after her death. The village was in deep mourning, but no one was stricken with grief more than the Olo’eyktan. His mourning period lasted much longer than the average length. White paint was plastered on his skin for many months, not being able to shake the death of the woman he was supposed to spend a lifetime with. Her passing scarred parts of Tonowari that in the moment he felt would never heal, but thankfully years later, he’s come out on the other side of that pain. 

“You saw me endure,” Tonowari continues, voice steady though the weight of his emotions are not. “You saw me lead while hollow.” He pauses for a moment, ​​not because he has lost his place, but because the truth of it settles like a weight in his chest. The fire crackles softly between breaths, while the ocean waves crash along the sand. Then Tonowari lifts his head again, continuing where he left off. “And you have seen the parts of me that returned.”

His voice is quieter now, fuller. He doesn’t speak with the voice of an Olo’eyktan addressing his people, but a man speaking from the deepest place in his heart, a part of himself he doesn’t show his people often, needing to keep his authoritative image but when he does it makes an impact. 

“She brought warmth back into my home,” he says, hand still pressed to his chest. “She brought laughter where there had only been echoes.” His eyes find yours again, wanting his words to feel intimate despite being in front of the clan. “She did not demand my healing, nor did she rush it. She stood beside me… until I was ready to love again.”

Your chest aches, tight with emotion you can barely contain. Your vision blurs, firelight glistening as tears pass your waterline and streak your cheeks, despite your best effort to steady yourself. You lift a hand to your chest, allowing your palm to rest over your heart, mirroring your fiancé’s stance, overwhelmed by the tenderness of his confession. 

“Tonight, I respect her not only for facing iknimaya,” he says, voice growing stronger as his tone becomes overwhelmed with love and pride. “but for choosing this life. This clan. And for choosing me.” He takes one step forward, then another, closing the distance just enough that his presence feels closer, more personable to his people. “After this night,” he declares, “she will stand beside me as my mate.”

“I love this woman,” Tonowari continues plainly, not feeling the need to embellish his words. “And I plan to honor her,” he continues, “as I honor Eywa, as I honor this clan. With my strength. With my life. And with my heart.”

He draws a slow breath, chest rising beneath the scars that mark him as Olo’eyktan, as a widower, as father, and as a man who’s soon to be mated once again. “So tonight,” Tonowari says, his voice rising, carrying across the space, his speech becoming close to its end. “I give thanks for new beginnings.”

His gaze sweeps outward again, encompassing the young Metkayina who completed their trials, the elders, the warriors, the families gathered beneath moonlight. “For those who faced challenges and returned stronger. For those who chose the path forward, even when it was difficult. For those who stepped into who they are meant to become.”

Then his eyes return to you, blue irises filled with love. “And I give thanks,” he continues, warmth threading through his body as he speaks, his words coded to touch every heart in the crowd but specifically designed for your consumption. “for the courage to start anew. For the patience that allowed healing. For the love that does not demand, but endures.”

“Those who passed iknimaya walk with confidence,” Tonowari declares, looking outward towards his people with an expression of happiness, a feeling that consumes everyone on nights like this. “Lead with honor. Love with strength. And may we all remember that Eywa does not only test us to break us, she tests us so we may grow.” The Olo’eyktan finishes his speech with a head nod, lowering it slightly, as if it seals his words and the meaning they hold. 

For a moment, the Metkayina are silent. No one makes a sound, but once they realize Tonowari has completed his closing remarks, the reef people erupt. Cheers, yips, and claps can be heard from all directions. Warriors thump their chests. Elders nod with quiet pride. Musicians utilize their instruments and show their approval. And the other population of Na’vi express their support in their own ways. 

The Metkayina assumed that you both would be mating tonight, things have been spreading through the gossip mill, but now it's confirmed from their chief's mouth. They are happy for you and Tonowari, aside from a reluctant portion who have many reasons why they don’t agree with your union. Nonetheless, you and Tonowari have support from majority of the clan members and that means the world to both of you.

After a while, the cheers begin to soften, shifting into something warmer and less thunderous. The musicians play their tunes at a low tempo, allowing the rhythm of celebration easing into something quieter. Families begin to gather their children, elders lean toward one another in quiet discussion, and the great fire that once burned brightly in the middle of the festival starts to burn lower, allowing the flames to fizzle out.

The festival has reached its end, and while some Metkayina decided to linger around the beach, others decide to depart, whether its going home and relax after todays festivities, or continue their night with more romantic festivities.

Your heart is still racing from Tonowari’s confession, beating so hard you swear he must be able to feel it from where he’s standing. The echoes of his words linger in the air long after the cheers have faded, your mind replaying his words over and over until its all you can hear.

You’re still rooted in the place Tonowari asked you to stand, feeling too stunned to move anywhere else. When the crowd begins to thin, and he finishes his conversation with his co-leader of the clan, you finally see him moving toward you. 

As he strides over to you, murmurs begin to fill the air. Knowing smiles and sidelong glances come from the na’vi still scattered along the sand. But, Tonowari doesn't pay any attention to looks he’s receiving as the Metkayina imagine what will take place between you and their Olo’eyktan. They’ve already witnessed the chemistry between earlier, along with other small moments over as your courtship publicly progressed, so they can only assume how steamy things will become on your mating night.

When he reaches you, the noise of the world falls away. Up close, his expression is different than it was moments ago before the clan. His authoritative edge is still present, still every inch Olo’eyktan, but there is something gentler in his eyes now, his demeanor shifting into something softer.

You swallow thickly and lift a hand to your face, brushing away the few tears that managed to escape while listening to Tonowari’s heartfelt words. “I…” Your voice comes out softer than you expect, making you sound breathless as you begin to admit your reaction of Tonowari’s speech. You shake your head with a small, disbelieving smile, feelings your emotions trying to get the best of you. “I didn’t expect that. Any of it.”

His brow muscles creases faintly as he tilts his head, a sign that he’s focused on every word that falls from your lips. “What you said,” you continue, glancing briefly past his shoulder and towards where he stood so proudly moments ago, speaking of you like you were his most prized possession. “It was really sweet. You didn’t have to say all of that. Not in front of everyone.”

Before you can say anything else, his hands come up, large and warm as they cradle your face. His thumbs gently sweep beneath your eyes, wiping away the last traces of your tears with a tenderness that makes your chest ache all over again. “I know I did not need to,” he says sincerely, turning your head so your eyes find their way back to his. “But I wanted to.” His thumbs still, resting against your skin, while he expresses why he decided to declare his love for you in front the clan. “My people deserved to hear it. You deserved to be honored. To be loved out loud.”

He leans forward, closing the small amount of distance between you both, allowing your foreheads to almost touch. “And I meant every word,” he adds quietly, feeling the need to make it known. “Especially the part where I said I love you.”

Something in you gives way when his words settle in your mind. Your breath catches, shoulders easing as the tension you didn’t realize you were holding finally slips away. You soften into his hands, your lips part on a quiet exhale, eyes shining as you look up at him. ‘Could this man be any more perfect?’ You think to yourself, wondering how you got so lucky.

You don’t give yourself time to overthink it. You lean in immediately, rising just enough to close the distance between you, drawn by instinct, affection, and the overwhelming need to feel him after all the sweet things he just said.

Your lips meet his softly at first, like you’re testing the waters, making sure this moment is real. Tonowari exhales against you, a low sound that vibrates through your chest, and then his mouth moves with yours, allowing the kiss to deepen. One of his hands slides from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers threading gently near the base of your kuru, making a soft moan escape your lips and into his mouth.

This kiss doesn’t end in a few seconds, it lingers. It’s slow, unhurried, filled with all the emotions that are too woven into your hearts to express. His lips are warm and familiar, moving against yours with a tenderness that makes your heart stutter. You melt into him, one hand coming up to rest against his chest, right over his heart, feeling it beat strong and steady beneath your palm.

Around you, the last of the Metkayina continues to drift away, giving you two privacy without being asked, sensing the tension between you and him. When you finally pull back, your foreheads rest together, noses brushing, your breaths mingling in the quiet. You’re smiling without realizing it, nerves and excitement tangling in your chest.

Tonowari’s hand moves further down your body, making its way to your waist, drawing your attention. “It is time,” he says softly, his eyes piercing into yours. You don’t need him to explain, his body language does enough talking for him. The meaning behind his words settles instantly, sending a rush of nerves through your stomach. 

You’re nervous, but excited nonetheless. You’ve been anticipating this night since you and Tonowari began courting, counting down the days, waiting for this very moment, where your fantasy turns into a reality.

You let out a shaky laugh, nodding as you look up at him. “I’m ready.” you whisper, voice full of emotion. And with that, he reaches for your hand, mingling his fingers through yours. With your other hand, you slip it around his bicep, holding onto Tonowari as if your body is meant to be tethered to him.

He keeps your hand in his as he guides you away from the center of the beach, the sounds of festival becoming a distant murmur behind you.

While walking you spot the children near the edge of the village, still riding the last waves of excitement from the gathering. Tsireya is laughing as Ao’nung dramatically reenacts something that happened earlier in the night, arms flailing, while Lo’ak interrupts every few seconds with his own exaggerated commentary. 

“There they are,” you murmur softly. Before you and Tonowari can go off for the night, you and him must talk to the children and explain to them that you’ll be needing to go away for the night.

Tonowari follows your gaze and once he notices the children he nods. As you approach, Tsireya notices you first. “y/n!” she calls, jogging toward you with a grin. Ao’nung and Lo’ak trail after her, curiosity flickering when they see the way Tonowari’s hand is still firmly linked with yours.

When all three children are surrounding you, that’s when you and Tonowari let go of each other's hand. He bends slightly so he’s closer to their height, his presence calm and relaxed. “We came to tell you all something,” 

The way he says it makes Ao’nung narrow his eyes, knowing that tone from a mile away. Whenever his father talks like that, it means it’s serious. “That sounds suspicious.”

You laugh softly, knowing how on guard Ao’nung is at times. “Nothing bad,” you promise, resting your hand briefly on his shoulder. “Your father and I are leaving for the night.”

“Leaving?” Lo’ak echoes, brows furrowing, not understanding why you need to leave for the night. “Where are you going?” The question draws matching looks from Ao’nung and Tsireya. All three of them stand there, waiting for a response. 

For a brief moment, you and Tonowari share a glance.

In Na’vi culture, children are not kept ignorant, but neither are they rushed. They are taught certain aspects of life when the time is right, such as mating. The children already know what tonight signifies. They know it marks the moment when you and Tonowari will return as husband and wife. 

What they do not yet know, the part that is reserved for adulthood, is the deeper truth of how such bonds are sealed and what usually follows once the bond has been made.

You assumed they would ask, but you still didn’t know how to answer. While searching for the right words, Tonowari smoothly steps in, leadership settling over him like a second skin. “There are matters we must attend to,” he says evenly. “Important ones.”

You nod quickly, backing him up. “We’ll be back in the morning. You’re staying with Padma and Yapto tonight.” You had spoken to Padma weeks ago, long before tonight arrived, making arrangements for where the children will be staying while you and Tonowari are away, needing them to stay with someone you both trust so you can have peace of mind while away. 

At the mention of her name, Tsireya’s shoulders relax. “Oh. Okay.” Tsireya enjoys spending time at Padma and Yapto’s mauri, because that means she can spend time with her friend, Rotxo. The mated pair have always been kind to her and since her father is friends with them, she has no complaints about being there tonight.

Her brother, Ao’nung, however, crosses his arms. He needs more than half-answers. His eyes flick between you and his father, sharp and searching. He doesn’t understand what could possibly be so important it can’t wait until morning, or why it has to be without them. “Why can’t we come?”

Tonowari doesn’t bristle at the challenge. If anything, a faint curve touches the corner of his mouth, amused by his son’s stubbornness and strong will. Both traits he knows all too well, inherited directly from his mother, Ronal. He straightens slightly, presence still calm but becoming authoritative. “Because,” he says, “this is something y/n and I must do alone.”

Ao’nung opens his mouth again, ready to argue. “That doesn’t make any sense—”

“It will make sense,” Tonowari cuts him off with a raised hand, not sharp, but firm in that strict fatherly way. “Just not tonight. You will understand fully when you are older.”

You step closer then, smoothing a hand down Ao’nung’s arm. “Some things are only for grown-ups,” you say softly, taking a more gentle approach. “Not because they’re bad, but because they carry responsibility. And tonight is one of those times.”

Lo’ak shifts on his feet, clearly more open-minded than his soon-to-be stepbrother. “So is it like… marriage stuff?” he guesses. “Or leadership stuff?”In his young mind, since Tonowari is Olo’eyktan and you just passed your Iknimaya, he assumes it’s something that has to do with you “becoming one of the people”. Or that since you and Tonowari are courting, you and him must be going on a date night or something of the sort.

Tonowari inclines his head with a small smile, resting his hand on Lo’ak’s head, ruffling his hair slightly. “Something like that, little one.”

Tsireya studies your faces for a moment longer, perceptive as always. She nods, accepting it for what it is, understanding what you and her father are saying. “We’ll be okay,” she says, glancing toward the path that leads back to the village. “Padma always lets us stay up a little longer.”

Ao’nung huffs through his nose, still not satisfied. “That’s not the point.”

Before frustration can take root, Tonowari exchanges a glance with you, a look that explains he’s about to go into phase two of the plan you and him agreed upon. “If all of you behave tonight,” he says casually, shifting his attention back to his son, “y/n and I will take you all to Three Brothers tomorrow.”

That gets their attention immediately. Ao’nung’s arms fall to his sides. “We get to go past the sea wall?” he asks, eyes lighting up at the thought.

“Yes,” Tonowari confirms. “But only with us. You know you cannot go there alone.” 

Three Brothers Rock is located in the Eastern Seas, not far from the village of Awa’tulu. Due to it being past the seawall terraces, the village’s protection, children are not allowed out that far without supervision because of the dangers that lurk in those waters. 

Three brothers is a place where warriors go hunting, the healers go find some of their required herbs, and there’s different flora and fauna that can’t be found around the village. Three brothers is known to be where the “real men hunt”, so to the young people wishing to become warriors, they want nothing more than to take their practice spears and crossbows out there and hunt like the adults do.

Ao’nung’s eyes narrow thoughtfully as the idea settles in, his skepticism already fading away as he thinks about all the activities he’ll be able to participate in. “If we go… can we actually do things there?” he says, needing to hear the terms and conditions before agreeing.

Tonowari's brow muscles crinkle just a little, wanting his son to elaborate. “Such as?”

“Hunt,” Ao’nung answers immediately. “and bring things back.”

Lo’ak perks up beside him, thinking of how cool he’ll look to his friends if he brings back something cool from the trip, he might even find an Akula tooth and the thought of that excites him. “Yeah, like real stuff. Not just boring animals like those tiny fish.”

Tonowari considers them for a beat, letting the anticipation build, despite him already knowing what his answer will be. “If you listen,” he says evenly, looking between the boys. “and respect the reef, then yes. You may hunt and bring back what Eywa allows.”

That seals the deal for Lo’ak, he’s already thinking about the trinkets he wants to collect. Lo’ak grins so wide it looks like his face might split. “Yes!” he says to Ao’nung, bouncing on his heels, giving him a look that says ‘you better agree.’

Ao’nung lets out a pleased huff, chin lifting, acting as if his hands are being tied but he’s really just as excited as Lo’ak. “Okay, you and y/n can go. I’m cool with it.”

Tsireya, who has been quiet through the exchange, tilts her head slightly, eyes bright with her own excitement. “I can’t wait for all the pretty fauna and flora,” she adds softly, already imagining all the items she can find and use to accessorize her hair, clothing, and jewelry with. “The shells… the smooth stones.” She smiles shyly, looking up at you. “The ones you use when you braid my hair.”

Your heart melts instantly, knowing how much Tsireya loves adding those things to her look, you can tell it makes her feel like a little pretty princess. You crouch slightly so you’re closer to her level, brushing a strand of hair from out of her face. “We’ll look for the best ones.” you promise. “We can even get some things to make matching anklets with.” 

Tonowari watches the exchange with a softened expression, admiring the bond you and his daughter share. “It is decided,” he says. “Tomorrow. Three Brothers. If you are all on your best behavior tonight. That means no arguing and no giving Padma and Yapto any trouble.” He gives Ao’nung and Lo’ak a pointed look, the two troublemakers out of the trio, always finding a way to get under each other's skin.

Ao’nung straightens immediately at the tone, placing a hand over his chest in mock solemnity, acting as if he never disbehaves. “I will be the most respectful child you have ever seen,” he declares.

Lo’ak snorts, thinking that’s rich coming from Ao’nung, knowing he’s almost always getting in trouble by Tonowari. “You said that last time.”

“That was different,” Ao’nung shoots back, giving him some harsh side eye. “This is Three Brothers.”

Tonowari raises a brow, unimpressed, hoping the boys will keep there end of the bargain or they will be having some chores added to their list of duties when they help around the clan. “Your behavior will determine whether tomorrow happens at all.”

Tsireya giggles softly at how the boys shut up after her father says that. She can tell they really want this trip. “We’ll be good,” she promises, planning to keep them in line like she always does, it’s her duty as their sister after all. “All of us.” 

Before Tonowari can respond, right on cue, Padma appears along the path from the village. “There you are!” Padma calls warmly, her voice carrying easily over the sand as she approaches. Yapto walks beside her, calm and steady as always, while Rotxo has already broken into a run the moment he spots the others.

“Ao’nung! Tsireya!” Rotxo calls, skidding to a stop in front of them, tail flicking with excitement. “You’re staying with us tonight!”

Ao’nung lights up immediately, excited to have a fun night with his best friend. “Yes! Can we—”

“—no racing the way home,” Padma cuts in gently, resting a hand on Rotxo’s shoulder before the boys can take off, not wanting to have to chase them around the island. “You two have played enough for one night.”

She turns to you then, her smile softening. “Everything settled?” She asks, wanting to make sure your plans are going smoothly.

“Yes. Thank you for watching them. We appreciate it very much.” 

Padma waves a hand lightly, not needing any sort of thanks. Moments like these is what friends are for. Plus, she knows how much Rotxo loves spending time with Lo’ak and Tonowari’s children. “It is no problem.” Her gaze flicks briefly to Tonowari, then back to you, excited for what the night holds for the two of you. “Besides, it’s an important night.”

Yapto inclines his head respectfully toward Tonowari, seeing him as both his Olo’eyktan and a friend. “They will be fine,” he says evenly. “They will be kept busy and be returned to you in one piece.”

Tonowari meets his gaze, the two men sharing a quiet moment of mutual respect. “I trust you,” Tonowari replies simply, knowing that Yapto and his mate are good people, after all he’s known them for many years. “I know you both will take good care of them.” 

Before the children leave with Padma, you kneel slightly to hug each of them. Lo’ak wraps his arms around you without hesitation, holding on a little longer than the others. Ao’nung accepts a quick squeeze, pretending like he’s cool with or without a hug but he’s leaning into it anyway. 

Tsireya hugs you gently, soft and sweet, before letting you go and repeating the same motion with her father. Tonowari returns the affection and hugs his daughter back and once she pulls away, he rests a steady hand on each of the boy's shoulders, pulling them in. 

As the children drift back toward Padma and Yapto, Padma pauses, then steps closer to you. She draws you into a brief embrace, firm and reassuring. As she leans in, she murmurs quietly in your ear, talking in a tone so only you can hear her words. “You are ready,” she says gently, rubbing your back in a soothing manner. “Trust yourself.”

You already know what she means. She’s alluding to the conversation you and her had earlier today, when you expressed your feelings to her about mating with Tonowari. You appreciate her words of encouragement, it’s exactly what you needed. “Thank you, I will.” 

She pulls back with a warm squeeze of your hands, giving you a small smile before turning to herd the children toward the village. Yapto places a guiding hand at Rotxo’s back while Tsireya chatters excitedly, and soon their voices fade into the woven pathways, making their way to the heart of the village.

When they’re gone, leaving only you and the Olo’eyktan, there’s a shift, an intimate one. Tonowari turns to you, the weight of fatherhood easing from his posture as his focus settles entirely on you. “Now,” he says softly, extending his hand, “our night truly begins.”

You take his hand without hesitation, intertwining your hand with his. Tonowari leads you along the shoreline, moonlight painting across the water. After a few steps, he slows, glancing down at you, with a softened expression. “It is a long walk.”

“No it isn’t—” you start to protest, already smiling as he says it, because you both know he’s exaggerating. To where he’s leading you is less than a quarter of a mile away, you can easily make it.

Tonowari glances down at you, eyes warm, and full of light in a way that always makes your stomach flutter. “Humor me, syulang.” he says instead, voice low and fond. “You have had a long day.” He insinuates to the many trials you faced during your iknimaya which was a physical strain, then the mental when you talked to his brother, and lastly the emotional when you and him could barely contain yourselves on the dance floor.

You let out a soft laugh, shaking your head as you walk beside him. “I’m perfectly capable of walking a little farther.”

“I know,” he answers easily, looking straight ahead for a moment. “But tonight…” His thumb brushes over the back of your hand where your fingers are laced together, and after a few more steps, he slows, gaze dropping to you with a look that’s far from innocent. “I would rather you conserve your strength.” 

The words shouldn’t make your pulse jump, but they do. Along with your heart picking up its pace. Heat curls low in your belly at the implication, nerves sparking beneath the excitement you’ve been carrying all evening. You tilt your head, arching a brow at him. “I bet you do.”

For a moment, something flickers across his face. It’s multiple things at once, but the emotions you recognize are amusement, hunger, and something deeper beneath his steady composure. The corner of his mouth lifts just a fraction, his playful side emerging. “Tonight will require it.” he replies, voice smooth and unhurried, as if he isn’t deliberately unraveling you with every word that rolls off his tongue.

You laugh softly, though it comes out breathier than you intend, feeling your body begin to warm, and let’s just say it’s not the humidity. “You say that like you’ve planned something… strenuous for us to do.”

“I have.” he says simply. There’s no hesitation. No teasing denial. Just certainty. When you realize what he's insinuating, what you and him are discussing without using the proper terms, you can feel your chest tightening. Everything feels so heavy but thrilling at the same time. 

You tighten your grip on his hand, suddenly feeling very aware; of how close he is, of how the night seems to stretch open with all time in the world, like the moment you’ve been waiting for is in the moment's grasp, because it finally is. “Then I suppose,” you murmur, “I should thank you for your concern.”

“You may,” he replies, glancing down at you again, voice dropping just enough to send a shiver along your spine. “But later. When you truly have something to thank me for.”

Before you can respond and acknowledge the heat behind his words, or even gather the clever —yet flirty— retort forming on the tip of your tongue, Tonowari stops entirely. You open your mouth to question what he's doing, and suddenly the ground is gone.

You squeal as he scoops you up with ease, one arm beneath your knees, the other secure around your back, lifting you as though you weigh nothing at all. Instinctively, you grab onto his shoulders, heart racing as laughter bubbles out of you. “Tonowari!” you gasp, half-laughing, half-breathless. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you conserve your strength,” he repeats from earlier, utterly unbothered, already continuing down the shore. His grip is firm and protective, holding on to you as if you were a delicate flower. “You said it yourself. Plus, I do not want you to tire yourself out. There are important activities we must do soon.”

You scoff, shaking your head at how now he’s putting words in your mouth, but you can’t stop smiling to even bring that part to light. “You are unbelievable.”

“And yet,” he says smoothly, glancing down at you, eyes warm and full of intent, “you are smiling.” And that’s something even you can’t deny. You’re smiling so much it feels like your cheeks will begin to hurt. 

The closeness you and him share makes everything feel heightened. The steady rhythm of his steps, the warmth of his body pressed against you, the way your heart seems to beat in sync with his. You rest your head briefly against his shoulder, letting yourself be held, letting the moment sink in, allowing yourself to be swept off your feet, emotionally and physically. 

Soon, a line of canoes comes into view, resting gently at the water’s edge. You lift your head, curiosity flickering through your nerves. “We’re taking a canoe?”

Tonowari nods, giving a soft hum along with it. “You have been among the Metkayina for many months now,” he says. “Yet you have never ridden in one.” 

You smile at the realization, realizing just how much Tonowari pays attention to you. “I haven’t.” In all your time living amongst the reef people, you still haven't used one of their most popular modes of transportation. You don’t know why you haven’t but you’re glad this moment will be your first.

“So tonight,” he says, lowering you carefully into the shallow water before helping you step into the canoe, “is the perfect time.” He steadies it for you, hands firm at your waist as you settle inside, making sure you’re comfortable before stepping in after you. 

You watch him with quiet admiration as he unties the line and takes his place, movements practiced and smooth, showing how much he’s done this over the course of his life. 

Tonowari grabs the oars from the floor of the canoe and once they hit the ocean, the structure begins to move. Once some momentum is gained the canoe glides forward, leaving the shore behind.

The water opens around you, calm and endless beneath the stars. The village lights fade into the distance, replaced by the hush of the sea and the soft sound of the oar cutting through the water. You look at Tonowari, at the way his eyes keep finding yours between strokes, full of affection and devotion, showing just how much he’s ready to spend the rest of his life with you.

As the canoe journeys through the water, the sea welcomes you both as though if knows this night is important in more ways than one. You sit quietly, hands resting in your lap, heart full as you take in the view around you.

Ocean life stirs beneath the surface with every gentle movement of the oars, small fish dart beneath the canoe, leaving their glowing bioluminescent trails in their wake, and farther out, larger shapes begin to move at their own rhythm.

You breathe it all in, the salt in the air, the magic of tonight. This is perfect. A canoe ride feels so romantic, intimate in a way you would’ve never expected. There’s no rush, no noise, just the two of you on the open waters, moving toward something unknown but deeply anticipated. 

You glance at Tonowari again, loving how moonlight catches along his facial tattoos, and the strength in his muscular arms as he uses the oars to guide you from the village. 

He hasn’t told you anything about where you’re going. Not once, he wouldn’t share a single thing no matter how many times you asked, teased, or tried to coax details out of him, he only smiled and told you to trust him. 

If this is only the beginning, if this quiet, glowing journey is merely the first step in what he’s prepared for your mating night, then you can hardly imagine what awaits you at the end of it. The thought sends a flutter through your chest, excitement and nerves twisting together until it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The silence between you is comfortable, neither of you feeling the need to speak, allowing the heavy meaning of tonight to fill the conversational gaps. It hums with everything unspoken; the months of longing, the restraint, the love that has been building steadily between you. 

Tonight, things will happen that will change your lives forever. You and him will forge a bond that will never be broken, share a love that is so profound and deep that your heart could burst. Soon, you will be participating in one of the most anticipated moments of your life, and even though you're nervous, you’ve never felt more ready.

Previous — Chapter Seven [Part One] ・Next - Chapter Eight

𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑’𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄… I hope you guys enjoyed meeting Tonowari’s older brother! If you guys would like to learn more about him before Volume Two, let me know!

If you would like to be tagged in this series click here and fill out the Taglist form!

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓… @moonchildxoxx @ikeyniofthetayrangi @unholycheesesnack @luchicm04 @anemonelovesfiction @thebiggestwhorearound @taronyuhunter @hot15936 @v4mp1rr3 @avatarobsessedgirly @rivatar @avatarsslut @kodzuvk @32saucy-minx @xxannyxx @certainkittenpeach @mimisweetz @eme1hyst @neteyamyawne @scrumptiouslampwobblercop @lexasaurs634 @beautiful-brown-skin-05 @breadnchocolate-blog @reading-doll @trashf0x @avatarloverfrfr @alyssa23145678910 @eywas-heir @neptunesbbby @n7cje @hinekoto @lovedheartsss @introvertednoah @sweetdayme4427 @tenshiasuhara @livvie1512-blog @jakesullyfatjuicypeen @daenerysluvrr @marsymars-world @sassyqueen15 @yawnetu @mudimar @baybaybear1 @yuliya-13 @nia-channel-taylor @lakeli @pitypinkabyss @otakusef @svnnynostalgia @rxsilabeth--er

The grass was soft underneath your hands, unlike the grip of the hulking male pressing you down to the ground.

Before you could protest, he ripped your panties with a single tug of his sharp nails, throwing the ruined cloth over his shoulder and focusing his attention back on your small body. You gasped when your hips were lifted, feeling your ass and knees rise off the ground and towards the male behind you.

Face heating up at the compromising position, you tried to wiggle away, begging him to put you down. 

If only you realized how lewd the action was. 

~

You were quite the fleshy thing, very different from the members of his own race.

When he grabbed you, he was fascinated by how pliant and soft your skin was, no ounce of strength found in your weak limbs when he shoved you none-too-gently to the ground. Removing the small article of clothing shielding him away from his prize, he was mildly amused by your kittenish noises before grabbing on to your hips. 

He had to see if your anatomy was similar or any different to his own females.

Your ass jiggled when you shook your hips, the sight momentarily distracting the male as he felt his member jerk in interest under his loincloth. He fought the urge to bite down on your plump behind, the scent of your arousal intensifying now that his face was nearing your slick-ridden lips.

Tilting his head at the puffiness of your slit, he carefully brought up his fingers to part your lips. Ignoring your horrified shriek, he took a long look at your sex and blinked.

You were… pink.

Curiosity quickly ate away at him and he wondered what you would taste like.

~

The first swipe of his tongue had you jerking to a halt. Your mind went blank with confusion then quickly shifted to mortification as you realized what had just touched you.

"H-hey! You don't just-!" Your protest was cut off when another broader swipe ran along your pussy, the Na’vi ignoring your discomfort as he found he liked your taste. He lapped away at you, kneading at the fat of your hips in a circular motion all the while. Soft little pants left you, shocks of pleasure spiking throughout your body and making you curl your toes in reaction to it. The little bud between your legs was soon pulsating, making you twitch in his grasp every time his raspy tongue grazed it. Oh God, you just hoped he wouldn’t find out how sensitive that organ was or you were fucked.

With your arms on the ground and lower body tilted up in the air, there was no way for you to shift away from him. You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to fight off the sensations he was awakening in your body to no avail. Your body betrayed you with the continuous wetness dripping out of your core and into his awaiting mouth.

When a long line of slick ran up your lower belly, you couldn’t hide the shameless moan that left you when he followed the trail. He had lapped directly on to your neglected clit with the action, causing your body to jerk spontaneously from finally having attention on your little nub. 

You felt him pause, an inquisitive rumble coming from him.

“Please… You can’t.. do that...,“ you panted breathlessly, “Put me down or…you’ll be sorry.” You ended lamely, mind a jumble of emotions as you tried to clear your head.

It was the wrong thing to say.

Apparently, he didn’t take kindly to your weak threat, your hands quickly leaving the ground as he stood up to his full height. A terrified shriek left you, your body dangling up feet above the air with only his hands preventing you from falling and smacking your head. 

Before you could get your bearings straight, he buried his face into your pussy, mouth enveloping your entire vulva as he plunged his tongue repeatedly inside your inner walls in a harsh in and out motion. It was then that you couldn’t hide your body’s delight, eyes tearing up as your mouth babbled nonsense about stopping before high pitched cries overtook your words. His tongue was long and reached deeper inside you than your own fingers, stabbing at your nerve endings and making you spasm in shocked pleasure. 

“Oh! Oh God~!!” Perspiration coating your body, you tried to snap your legs shut only to have him shift his grip on your waist to grab your thighs painfully and force you open again. With your blood rushing to your head from being upside down, you quickly became lightheaded and let out embarrassing mewls as he continued to eat your cunt ravenously.

Quickly wrapping your arms around his waist, you rested your heated face against his toned muscles, a thin line of drool escaping you to smear on his skin. A glance down his body gave you the unsettling view of his immense erection tenting his loincloth, threatening to come out of its confines in any second.

Your eyes rolled to the back of your head when you felt a hard suction on your clit, distracting you momentarily from the display of his interest. You curled your toes and let out a whorish moan when he closed his lips around your clit and started tugging on it cruelly.

~

Pulling away from your drenched hole with a squelch, he licked away your essence coating his mouth and chin. Your nectar was delicious, but he couldn’t with the pain of his throbbing erection no longer. He wanted to be inside you, feeling when your walls clamped tight on his cock, milking him for all his worth. 

Spreading your labia with his thumbs, he took note of your small cunt clenching depravely around nothing as if it desired to have something fill it. Soaked in his spit and your slick, your pussy had reddened and shone so invitingly that he was almost tempted to sample you once more.

But no, he was at his limit. His cock wanted you, desiring your small form despite his feelings about humans.

Carefully bringing you back to the ground, he kneeled behind you, hands shaking in excitement as he wrestled away at the knot keeping his loincloth on.

~

Your eyes widened when he nudged your thighs open with his knee, realizing he was not done. Turning to look back at him, you whimpered when you saw him fumbling with his loincloth, the gargantuan bulge hidden beneath it making your stomach sink in dread. 

When he cast his cloth aside, your eyes widened at the length of his cock. 

You shook your head fiercely, realizing he was serious about making you take him. “Shit! I don’t think we should do this!” 

When you felt that thick appendage smack against your ass, your blood ran cold feeling it touch your lower back. Considering the alien was nearly ten feet tall, it should not have come as a surprise that while it was proportionate to his size, he had a monster cock that could tear you in two.

Feeling adrenaline spike throughout your body, you struggled desperately, thrashing violently to escape from him. “Listen to me! You're going to KILL ME WITH THAT THING! LET GO!!!”

Your protests were disregarded, the male choosing to to rub his cock on the crack of your ass, rocking to and fro as it helped to alleviate his throbbing erection. He did this for a few moments, completely ignoring how you tried to twist away from him. 

When you felt him move back to adjust his stance, you took a glance down and saw his hand pumping his length twice before lining it up with your pussy.

~

Observing the difference between his tapered tip and your sopping pussy, he became somewhat worried if you could even take him. 

“Quit squirming,” he warned, the first words out of his mouth doing little to reassure your stress. “I’ll be gentle and see how much you can take.”

He held on to you tightly, preventing you from escaping him even as you begged for him to stop. Your pussy resisted his girth but he pushed on, forcing your body to give until he managed to pop the head inside your warm channel. 

A squeak escaped your lips while a grunt left him at how ridiculously tight you were. Your body trembled under him as he pressed on, the lips of your sex stretching taut around his big cock. He had to bite his lips hard enough to draw blood, resisting the urge to just shove himself completely inside you with one stroke. A shiver of pleasure ran through him at the thought, but he didn’t want to break you so quickly.

“Don’t push it any further!”

“We’re not even halfway done, human.” he growled, gritting his teeth when your walls clamped down on him, making it difficult for him to feed you more of his cock. Bringing his elbow to the ground, he pressed his front on your back, making you recoil before he pulled you against him once more.

“Relax,” his lips brushed the top of your head, “It’ll be easier this way.”